Three days before he made the grammatical welkin ring, Winston Churchill was collecting an honorary degree at Columbia University. In the very home town of the American language, he was brash enough to decry the "undue reliance upon slang. In its right place slang has its virtues, but let us keep a tight hold of our own mother tongue. . . ."
Then he turned up at New Haven's Soundscriber Corporation, whose workers had put in overtime hours to finish two electronic recording machines, for Churchill's use in dictating his memoirs. In gratitude, Churchill rolled off a recorded message to the workers:...
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