Well, this quote won’t be exact, because I’m substituting one word. Another “light reading” book (I must go through four or five of those a week or be stupified by my other reading *heh*), Hell’s gate, by David Weber and Linda Evans.
“[English] doesn’t borrow from other languages. It follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them on the head, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.”
And that’s one reason I love the rapscallion language. And a reason why it’s the ONLY language worthy of being the official tongue of Americans. *heh* Well, at least of the Americans that once made this “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
As another Voice once said,
“In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man’s becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American…There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile…We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language…and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”
Theodore Roosevelt 1907
Yes, I added the emphasis. And I mean it.
Two worthy quotes to end the day, thank you.