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‘Garson O’Toole’ brilliantly traced the history of the phrase England and America are two countries separated by the same language—and of its numerous variants—in: Quote Origin: Britain and America Are Two Nations Divided by a Common Language, published on Sunday 3rd April 2016.
In the following, I will therefore content myself with listing the earliest occurrences that I have personally found of this phrase, which (in its present form) seems to date from 1942, and which has often been attributed to the Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950).
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences that I have found of the phrase England and America are two countries separated by the same language—and of its variants:
1-: From the Sunday Press-Chronicle (Johnson City, Tennessee, USA) of Sunday 13th September 1942 [page 4, column 1]:
G. B. S. And Genius
George Bernard Shaw at 86 rejects the idea that Stalin is a “greater genius” than Hitler. On this subject an interviewer quotes him as having said: “Being a great genius myself, I can speak with some authority. And just between ourselves, I don’t mind telling you that I don’t put much stock in genius. The plain truth is Stalin had the good sense to see what was coming and get ready for it.”
The Savian * mind also produced this one: “England and America are two countries separated by the same language.” If that strikes you as being funny, perhaps you might have said it yourself, if you’d thought about it. Being an ordinary person, however, the likelihood is that your ordinariness might have had something to do with limiting the field of your influence among students of pithy sayings, not to say epigrams. And so a snappy line would have been lost.
* The adjective Shavian (not Savian) means: relating to, characteristic of, or resembling, George Bernard Shaw or his works or opinions.
2-: From the following advertisement for Kalee Ltd., 60-66 Wardour Street, London, published in Kinematograph Weekly (London, England) of Thursday 19th November 1942 [page 42]—the illustration symbolises the friendship between the USA and the United Kingdom:
“Two great nations divided by a common language!” Maybe, but in everything that makes for an early and triumphant end to war we are one. Together we will finish the job and get going on post-war plans. Meanwhile
KEEP KALEE IN MIND
PROJECTION AND SOUND EQUIPMENT,
SCREENS, SEATING, CARPETS,
STAGE DRAPERIES, LIGHTING,
DECORATIONS.
3-: From Can’t You Understand King’s English? The Chances Are You Probably Can’t, published in the Asbury Park Sunday Press (The Shore Press) (Asbury Park, New Jersey, USA) of Sunday 29th November 1942 [page 3, column 2]:
England and America are two countries separated by the same language, says the Irish wit, George Bernard Shaw.
4-: From an essay by the U.S. Protestant priest and author Joseph Fort Newton (1880-1950), published in several newspapers on Monday 14th December 1942—for example in The Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA) [page 14, column 4]:
For well-nigh 30 years, since 1916 […], I have been going to and fro between England and America, as an ambassador of good-will and good feeling.
[…]
English people knew little of America and cared less about it. On our side the case was no better—actually it was worse. Bernard Shaw was right: “England and America are two countries separated by one language.”
5-: From Echoes and Gossip of the Day, published in the Liverpool Echo (Liverpool, Lancashire, England) of Thursday 17th December 1942 [page 2, column 4]:
Picturesque Pars
The weather was so bad it was only fit for conversation.
Nothing ever happens in a small town, but what you hear makes up for it.
—Virginia Stafford.
England and America are two countries separated by the same language.
—Bernard Shaw.
6-: From the Acton Gazette and West London Post (London, England) of Friday 18th December 1942 [page 3, column 3]:
ANGLO-AMERICAN COMMONWEALTH SUGGESTION
Addressing the Acton Anglo-American Association at a meeting held in Acton Town Hall on Saturday afternoon, Major W. E. Simnett, author of “Introducing Great Britain,” said the American people had ideas about the British Empire which dated back to George III’s time. America was no tight little country, but a vast federal nation. Perhaps there was truth in the saying that the two English-speaking peoples were divided by a common language, and if the British people, or many of them, were going to continue to look upon the Americans as a part of the Empire which for some exasperating but vague reason had separated from us Anglo-American understanding would not get very far.
7-: From the Kingsport Times (Kingsport, Tennessee, USA) of Sunday 9th May 1943 [page 4, column 3]:
Take My Word For It
By Frank Colby
Author of “Take My Word For It”George Bernard Shaw’s observation that “The British and Americans are two great peoples divided by a common tongue,” is a clever epigram that, like most epigrams, is wittier than it is truthful, for the British and Americans speak, not the same tongue, but separate dialects that sprang from the same tongue.
8-: From Leslie Howard: Interpreter, published in The Mayfield Messenger (Mayfield, Kentucky, USA) of Thursday 10th June 1943 [page 4, column 1]:
—Note: The British actor, producer, film director and author Leslie Howard (1893-1943) died when the plane he was in was shot down by German fighters over the Bay of Biscay:
Leslie Howard has always spoken the kind of English Americans understand. Probably as large a proportion of the American public as of the British are his loyal fans, at the movies or in the theater. Numerically the Howard audience in the United States must exceed that in Britain by many thousands.
There is something about him that the bargain-basement saleslady liked. And Americans who do not like bargain basements like Leslie Howard; his restrained style and skillful under-statement provided at least momentary relief from the raucousness that characterized so much American entertainment throughout the throbbing thirties. The heroes he personfied [sic] seemed to approach all this world’s problems with a sort of quiet finesse.
Now his fans are waiting for more news of the Lisbon-London plane. They are of two nations, sometimes said to be separated by a common language, but always grateful for an interpreter. Such a spectacular end for Mr. Howard’s career is something they cannot accept as fitting; it was the more subtle touch he seemed always to aim at. They like to think of him as they knew him in so many gratefully remembered roles, speaking their common language, adding to their common bonds.
9-: From the transcript of a speech delivered at Scottsbluff, on Monday 21st June 1943, by R. H. Jones, former director of the School of Social Studies, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, published in the Scottsbluff Daily Star-Herald (Scottsbluff, Nebraska, USA) of Tuesday 22nd June 1943 [page 8, column 3]:
He called for a deeper understanding between the two great nations, in the war and in the peace to follow.
[…]
Jones cautioned that the many ties—common language, beliefs, aims—may be barriers as well as aids to understanding. Like among close friends, small differences often prove the more irritating.
“Perhaps,” he said, “we might call the United States and Britain two nations separated by a common language.”
The greatest bond between the two nations is the mutual fighting for a way of life deemed more valuable than life itself, Jones said.
10-: From Query for Quebec, by ‘Uncle Dudley’, published in The Boston Daily Globe (Boston, Massachusetts, USA) of Saturday 14th August 1943 [page 8, column 1]:
Quebec is a happy choice for Mr. Churchill’s conference with President Roosevelt. That storied citadel is where Wolfe won a North American empire for Britain on Sept. 3, 1759; and it was during that same Seven Years War that our colonial troops discovered their own superiority to the European levies which emboldened them for our War of Independence two decades later.
British and Americans, someone has recently said, are “two peoples divided by a common language.” We are likewise alternately united in war times by military alliances and in peace time divided by misunderstanding of each others’ social systems and ignorance of or indifference to each others’ history. To judge by the flurry in the English press on the subject these last three years, their ignorance of our history is worse than ours of theirs, though (we are no ones to talk!) no worse than ours of our own.
The phrase has occasionally been applied to the relations between Australia and the USA. The following, for example, is from the transcript of the speech delivered by the chief of the U.S. Office of War Information in the South-West Pacific area, Mr. F. S. Marquardt, during a luncheon held in Melbourne on Tuesday 4th July 1944 by the Australia-America Co-Operation Movement—transcript published in The Age (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) of Wednesday 5th July 1944 [page 2, column 4]:
“Some people say Australians and Americans are the same people divided by a common language,” he added. “We have behind us the common traditions of British law and common language and all the rest, which make us so much alike. Perhaps this is a difficulty in understanding each other.
“Were I in France or Germany, where I could not walk up and talk to a person in his own language, I would probably think more about his problems. There is constant work to be done in explaining ourselves to each other.”
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