It’s such a delight to hear Yankee legend Yogi Berra deliver his Yogisms that it’s easy to overlook the fact that he likely didn’t make up most of them. Of course, that doesn’t make lines like “You can observe a lot by watching” any less profound. But if you’re interested in the accuracy of quotes attributed to him or someone else, start with linguist Garson O’Toole’s Quote Investigator. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “The Quote Investigator”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
Lawrence Peter Barra, otherwise known as Yogi Barra, is widely regarded as one of the greatest catchers in baseball history.
But he’s also famous for coming up with all kinds of quips and goofy statements that make you stop and think.
Like, for example, when you come to a fork in the road, take it.
Or this great advice, never answer an anonymous letter.
Or, of course, famously, it’s deja vu all over again.
These statements are so closely associated with him that they’re sometimes called yogi-isms.
But was yogi the first guy to ever say them?
Oh, probably not.
Probably not.
And a great place to investigate those kinds of claims is the website, quoteinvestigator.com.
It’s run by linguist Garson O’Toole, who tries to chase down the origins of these kinds of quotes.
And so often he finds that there’s really nothing new under the sun.
I mean, the ones that I mentioned, the when you come to a fork in the road, take it, and never answer an anonymous letter, both of those were around in the 1800s.
Yeah, I’m not surprised.
I find that again and again, the misattribution is far more common than the correct attribution, right?
And not only that, but sometimes it’s not the exact wording that was around.
It was the idea that was around.
And maybe it just finally got sharpened to the perfect form.
Yes.
Well, sort of like in Shakespeare, you know, he gets credited for a lot more words than he actually coined himself.
Right.
Yeah.
He may have been the first one to significantly use them.
And he may have been the popularizer, but he probably wasn’t the coiner of all those terms.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, you know, the good thing is that Yogi himself understood all this.
The subtitle of his book, which I think is called The Yogi Book, the subtitle is, I Really Didn’t Say Everything I Said.
That’s outstanding.
Yeah, that leads me to one of the aphorisms they’ve got in the quotation world, the quotation industry in the reference publishing, which is, when in doubt, just say Twain said it.
That’s true, right?
If not Twain, then Lincoln.
I was going to say Lincoln is the other one, right?
Yeah.
Well, we want to talk with you about language, all its forms, so call us 877-929-9673 or send us an email.
That address is words@waywordradio.org.
