From: benlizro@ihug.co.nz   
      
   His birthday (1-4-1887) was noted  during my 2018 Linguistic Birthdays   
   sequence. He was still very influential in linguistics when I began to   
   learn about it in the 1960s, particularly for his book _Language_ (1933).   
      
   Crystal has a quote from Chapter 2 of that book:   
      
   "The most difficult step in the study of language is the first step.   
   Again and again, scholarship has approached the study of language   
   without actually entering upon it. Linguistic science arose from   
   relatively practical preoccupations, such as the use of writing, the   
   study of literature and especially of older records, and the   
   prescription of elegant speech, but people can spend any amount of time   
   on these things without actually entering into linguistic study."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)