[…] the higher skill is won by the advanced or adult speakers, and the shape which they give to their inherited speech becomes the norm toward which new learners have to strive, attaining it when they can.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.69

Every single language has thus its own peculiar framework of established distinctions, its shapes and forms of thought, into which for the human being who learns that language as his “mother-tongue,” is cast the content and product of his mind, his store of impressions, however acquired, his experience and knowledge of the world.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.21