A pedantic correction (but it's still a good story)

[Paul Kiparsky]

>
> There was another one I heard about Roman Jacobson.  When he first  
> came to the U.S., his English was insufficient for lecturing, so in  
> his first class he said, "Does everyone here know Polish?"  One shy  
> student at the back timidly raised her hand saying she didn't.  He  
> leaned over the podium, spread out his hands, and said, "Vell, TRY."
>
> Si non e vero, e bien trovato.
>

It was my father, Valentin Kiparsky, not Roman Jakobson.  The  
occasion was the 1952 Linguistic Institute at Bloomington, Indiana.   
The language was Russian, not Polish.  And the student was male.

...ben cambiato, anyway.

Paul