Fernando Pessoa (as Bernardo Soares), in The Book of Disquiet (1982)
Misattributed
“My homeland is the portuguese language.”
Ibid., p. 230
Translation variants:
My fatherland is the Portuguese language.
My nation is the Portuguese language.
My country is the Portuguese language.
My home is the Portuguese language.
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Minha Pátria é a língua portuguesa.
Page 101
Da Gama, Cary Grant, and the Election of 1934 (2005)
As quoted in "Jamie Chung is finally over her fear of commitment" in New York Post (14 April 2015) https://nypost.com/2015/04/14/once-reluctant-bride-jamie-chung-is-ready-to-walk-down-the-aisle/
Variant translation: We inhabit a language rather than a country.
Anathemas and Admirations (1987)
“Music is the great cheer-up in the language of all countries.”
Mr. Bonaparte, in Golden Boy (1937), Act I, sc. ii
Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945
“The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language.”
Widely attributed to Shaw begin31 (187ning in the 1940s, esp. after appearing in the November 1942 Reader’s Digest, the quotation is actually a variant of "Indeed, in many respects, she [Mrs. Otis] was quite English, and was an excellent example of the fact that we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language" from Oscar Wilde's 1887 short story "The Canterville Ghost".
Misattributed
Variant: The English and the Americans are two peoples divided by a common language.
“The best way to learn a language may be an episode of jail in a foreign country.”
Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012), p. 62
