“We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.”

What does it mean?

A joke: Britain and America share almost everything, Wilde says, except the thing they are supposed to share most, the English language.

Key vocabulary

in common

shared by two or more people or groups

• “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”– Oscar Wilde
• “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”– Oscar Wilde
• “Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.”– Oscar Wilde
• “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”– Oscar Wilde