"We each of us possess, in a great or less degree, what the Germans call 'speech-feeling,' a sense of what is worthy of adoption and what should be avoided and condemned. This in almost all of us is an instinctive process...We know, for instance, that it is now wrong to say 'much' rather than 'many thanks'...We say a picture was 'hung', but a murderer was 'hanged', often, perhaps, without being conscious that we made the distinction...Grammarians can help this corporate will by registering its decrees and extending its analogies; but they fight against it in vain" (Introduction, pg.12-13.)

"It has become the language of the planet, the first truly global language" (Chapter 1, 19.)

"The year the Anglo-Saxons first crossed the sea to the former Roman province of Britannia, in AD 450, the odds against English becoming a world language were about a million to one...