From "The Writer's Almanac," a quote from Penelope Lively: "We open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we do not even know. We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse: we carry a museum inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never heard."

quote:

In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse:

Not me. I speak nothing but good ol' 'Merican.

Geoff, that is excellent! I love it.