question

[spartus]

Did some research on this, since I always thought it was Oscar Wilde myself. But there's some dissent out there. this CBS News article gives credit to G.B. Shaw, and there are spotted references to Wilde as well. No citations to Churchill that I could see, and on a personal note, Disraeli's a far more quotable MP anyway.

So then I found this:

The 'origin request' most frequently received. Sometimes the inquirer asks, 'Was it Wilde or Shaw?' The answer appears to be: both. In The Canterville Ghost (1887), Wilde wrote: 'We really have everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.' However, the 1951 Treasury of Humorous Quotations (Esar & Bentley) quotes Shaw as saying: 'England and America are two countries separated by the same language,' but without giving a source. The quote had earlier been attributed to Shaw in Reader's Digest (November 1942).

Much the same idea occurred to Bertrand Russell (Saturday Evening Post, 3 June 1944): 'It is a misfortune for Anglo-American friendship that the two countries are supposed to have a common language,' and in a radio talk prepared by Dylan Thomas shortly before his death (and published after it in The Listener, April 1954) -- European writers and scholars in America were, he said, 'up against the barrier of a common language.'

In cases like this, I am reminded of the words of Dorothy Parker, who said:

If, with the literate, I am
Impelled to try an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit;
We all assume that Oscar said it.

[shanbaum]

You can Google the phrase together with "Churchill" and find numerous references - but I will allow that none of them appear particularly authoritative; and from what I have seen, the attribution to Shaw appears easier to defend.

As for Wilde, the connection seems anecdotal, arising from the fact that it sounds like something he would write or say.

As for me, to borrow a phrase indisputably Wilde's, it appears I was writing a draft against a bank where I have no account.