"America and England are two nations divided by a common language." -Somebody, either Oscar Wilde or George Bernard Shaw. Or maybe both. In 1887 Wilde wrote: `We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language'. But the 1951 Treasury of Humorous Quotations (Esar Bentley) quotes Shaw as saying: `England and America are two countries separated by the same language', but without giving a source. It had earlier been attributed to Shaw in Reader's Digest.