“How embarrassing it is to try our knowledge of a foreign
language in the land where it belongs, and to discover that the natives seem
not to be saying any of the individual words we got out of the dictionary. Our
impression is correct; the man who speaks his own tongue is talking less in
words than in a tune. But since the tune can't be written down, we can't find
it outside of the spoken word.”
-- John Erskine, “Do Americans Speak English?,” 70 Nation
409 (15 Apr. 1925) (as quoted in The Ordeal of American English 8, 9 (C. Merton
Babcock ed., 1961)). (Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day)
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