Hats off to this ambassador of English

It has been said, and rightly so, that The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln, in which the US president honored thousands of soldiers who fell in a pivotal Civil War battle, may be the single most outstanding passage in the English language.

But I realized recently how another tall figure in American history, the children's book author and illustrator Dr Seuss, made an equally enduring, albeit whimsical, contribution to English and its proper (and sometimes improper) usage.

I had this insight while teaching English to Chinese children ages 8 to 10 as part of a volunteer project at the Zhenglei Tai Chi Academy in Haidian district of Beijing.