The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] Today, too, I would like to begin with a few introductory remarks, just as I did before the first lecture. I do ask you not to place too much hope in these few hours I can devote to this matter here—at least not in terms of content. On the other hand, it will certainly be meaningful to offer some food for thought on this subject. But given the impromptu nature of how this came about, what is to be said here about language development may really amount to nothing more than a few off-the-cuff remarks. And perhaps we will gain some guidance simply from the manner in which I conduct these discussions. I will not adhere to any conventional format, but will instead try to draw your attention to various points that will be important for an organic view of linguistic life.

[ 2 ] In the first lecture, I pointed out how our German language, in particular, has undergone a development in which its vocabulary has, so to speak, been subject to invasions. We were able to point to one such significant and large-scale “invasion”: the one that came with the influx of Christianity into the Nordic cultures, along with everything that accompanied this influx of Christianity. After all, Christianity did not merely bring its content, but conveyed this content through verbal imagery. And just as there was, viewed purely from the outside, little in the folk religions of the North and Central European populations that resembled what Christianity brought, so too was there no possibility of grasping Christianity using the vocabulary of the people of Northern and Central Europe. Therefore, along with Christianity, its bearers brought Christian mental images and Christian sentiments, as well as all the linguistic expressions that give them form. We have, after all, cited a number of such elements that were, so to speak, carried northward linguistically on the wings of Christianity. But then, everything pertaining to schooling also arrived as part of a current flowing from south to north. Words relating to schooling—such as “school,” “blackboard,” and so on—with the exception of, say, “reading,” “letter,” or “teacher”—have come up from the south; they are actually of Romance-Latin origin and have been incorporated into the German linguistic organism to such an extent that today people no longer consciously realize that these terms are, in essence, loanwords within the German linguistic organism. I was then able to point out how, later on, from the west—beginning in the 12th century—a new wave of linguistic influences arrived. And then I drew your attention to a Spanish wave and, finally, to what actually did not arrive until the 19th century: everything that immigrated from England.

[ 3 ] From the examples I have given you—and these points will be elaborated on in greater detail later—you can see for now that in those ancient times, when Christianity and, along with it, many other things first made their appearance, the linguistic genius still had the ability to internalize and reshape, in accordance with the people’s sensibilities, whatever had come their way. Admittedly, the peculiarity of this fact was not illustrated by a specific word belonging to Christianity, but rather by the relationship between the—as it is believed—proto-Germanic word Schuster and sutor. They are one and the same word. There was simply still so much language-forming power contained in the genius of German folklore that a word could be reshaped in this way. “Sutor” belongs to the oldest wave of influence. The further one moves from this earliest wave of influence to the next—which relates more to the school system—the more one will find that the sound of the word, as it is in German, is similar to that in Latin. And so it continues. With the later linguistic influences, it becomes apparent that the German linguistic spirit is increasingly incapable of reshaping what is introduced. Let us note this. Whether “Five o’clock tea” will also be transformed over time—that is, whether the German linguistic genius will be capable, over a relatively long period, of developing something like a transformative force, as it has done in the past over shorter periods—remains to be seen, and this is not significant for our purpose.

[ 4 ] Finally, we want to consider the question of what significance it has for the life of the nation as a whole that the inner language-forming force is, at least temporarily, waning—that is, that for the moment it is not as present today as it once was. This language-forming power is still present today to a greater extent the further one delves into the dialects. For example, one might inquire into the origin of a highly peculiar word found in the Austrian dialect: pakschierli, or bakschierli. The Austrians will surely be familiar with it. One can immediately grasp what a “pakschierli” is: a little girl who, when presented to strangers, prances about a bit and performs all sorts of things that remain within the bounds of propriety—that is a “pakschierli.” Or let’s say, a little marzipan angel who doesn’t exactly make you laugh, but evokes that inner state of mind which can be characterized as: you aren’t laughing yet; if the impression were to grow stronger in that same direction, then you would have to laugh. Such a little marzipan angel—that would be a “pakschierli.” What kind of word is this? It has no real connection to the rest of the dialect. It is nothing other than a transformed form of “possierlich.” This language-forming power can thus still be studied to a certain extent in the dialects; studying such things is also a good means of gaining insight into the active Folk-souls. And it could contribute immensely to understanding spiritual life as well, if one could gain insight into the Folk-souls. Then one would return to what I drew attention to in my work The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and of Humanity, and which such minds as Professor Dessoir—whom you know all too well—made fun of. Through Spiritual Science, one can also clearly discern what I have explained there: that the formation of consonants is connected to a reproduction of what becomes visibly apparent in the external world. What is expressed in consonants originates in the fact that, as human beings, we experience within ourselves something similar to what happens externally. To put it simply, I could say: When one drives a stake into the ground, one can sense the act of driving that stake by pushing off with one’s foot. This is the perception of one’s own act of will. Today, we no longer feel this act of will in the speech sound \(st\). But in earlier stages of language development, people felt in their own volitional activities imitations of what was happening outside. And so the consonantal element became the imitation of what was happening outside, while the vocalic element is that which expresses the inner world. \(A\) is astonishment, a kind of withdrawal. It is the relationship of the human being to the external world, which finds expression in the vowels. One must go far back if one wishes to penetrate to these things; but one can penetrate to them, and then one comes to realize that those theories which are based purely on external hypotheses—such as the so-called “Wau-Wau” or “Bim-Bam” theory—are utterly terrible aberrations. They are superficial, whereas an understanding of the human being itself can certainly lead one to recognize, on an inner level, the connection between sound and what seeks to come to light in the soul and spirit. Let us first consider this as a question that we intend to answer in the course of these sessions. In order to properly examine the various interconnections of linguistic elements in this light, we must, using individual examples that I will attempt to extract characteristically from the linguistic realm, gradually work our way up to what we actually wish to understand.

[ 5 ] Today I would like to choose examples that can show you how language gradually moves from the concrete to the abstract. Here, too, if we truly have the willingness to study reality, turning to dialect can sometimes help us. I’ll mention just one small example. When the Austrian farmer gets up in the morning, he speaks of a night’s sleep, but not in the same way that you probably speak of a night’s sleep. You essentially understand it as something very abstract, because you are educated, cultured people. The Austrian farmer is a man of nature: in everything that surrounds him, he perceives spiritual and soulful elements, and he had a strong awareness of this. Now, of course, this is fading even for him, but in the 1870s and 1880s it was certainly still present for anyone who cared to observe it as I did. Because the farmer still sees the elemental forces at work in everything all around him, he never expresses himself in abstract terms, but always in concrete terms. The farmer says: “I wipe the night’s sleep from my eyes.” — What is secreted in the eye during the night and can be washed out is, for him, the visible expression of sleep; that is what he calls “night’s sleep.” This is the secret of linguistic understanding, which was still very much alive until recently: the fact that something spiritual is connected to it in no way hinders this concrete understanding. The Austrian farmer certainly thinks of an elemental being, but he expresses it through the action of this secretion being driven into his eyes. He would never understand the word to mean the abstract concept that the educated, cultured person understands by it. Then the story begins to become somewhat abstract: If the farmer has attended school even a little, or has come into contact with the city, then he invokes, as it were, an invisible concrete reality. He still says, “I’m wiping the sleep of the night from my eyes”—but he makes a hand gesture to indicate that, for him, it is something very externally concrete and real.

[ 6 ] The point is that such an observation leads us to examine how, fundamentally, abstract linguistic expression ultimately refers back to something increasingly concrete. Consider the following example. In our language, this has disappeared, but in Scandinavian countries you can still find the word barn for “child.” We no longer have that word. What is the history of this word? On the one hand, the word takes us back to Gothic, where we find it in Ulfilas’s Bible translation. It takes us back to the word baíran = “to carry.” That, in turn, is related to both Greek and Latin. The relationship is so close that one can clearly recognize it by applying the law of sound shift discovered by Jakob Grimm regarding the Germanic languages and their relationship to other languages. This law states: What appears as \(b\) in one language appears as \(f\) in another. I will highlight just one example. This leads us, however, to the Greek term phero and the Latin term fero for the expression bairan, both of which also mean “to carry,” “to bring,” or, more specifically, “to carry in.” Bairan is merely a transformation of fero; the word has evolved in a different direction. Now there is also the Old High German term beran. Gradually, what is here a verbal formation disappears; and in German we no longer have a real way to reflect on the originally felt, perceived meaning. We look to the word barn = “child”; why? Because it is carried before it is born. It is the one who is carried—the child. Thus, one points to its origin; one calls a child “the one who is carried”—baíran = fero. In the German language, the only word remaining from this composition is gebären (“to give birth”). But we have something else; as a remnant of all this, we have retained that suffix found in words like “fruchtbar” (fruitful) and “kostbar” (precious). What does “kostbar” mean? That which bears the cost. What does “fruchtbar” mean? That which bears the fruit. This was expressed very vividly, not in the abstract sense we have today, but by referring to the concrete act of bearing. This can be particularly vivid to you when you say: Something becomes “ruchbar” because it carries a scent to you. The scent is carried to you; through this, a certain thing becomes “ruchbar.” In this way, we would find in many instances the immediate vividness that is characteristic of the language-forming genius of very ancient times. I would like to quote a line from Ulfilas’s translation of the Bible: jah witands Jêsus thôs mitônins izê qath. This would roughly translate to: “And Jesus, knowing their thoughts, spoke.” Here you find the word mitônins = thoughts. This leads us back to the word mitôn, which roughly means “to think.” In Old High German, it had already developed differently; there it is called “mezzôn,” and there is a related word, “mezzan,” which means “to measure.” Measuring—external measuring, concrete measuring—has, when felt inwardly, become “thinking.” Thus, an activity to be performed externally provided the basis for the word “to think.” “I think” actually means: “I measure something mentally.” This, however, is related to the Latin meditor, which we still find in “meditate,” and to the Greek medomai. If we go back to older forms of the creative activity of the German or Germanic linguistic genius, we find that this is still quite vividly present; but we must carry this out with true inner understanding.

[ 7 ] You are all familiar with the word “Hagestolz”; you know roughly what it means in modern language. But what is interesting is the connection between this word and what it actually used to mean. It has actually become what it is today only through a shift in meaning; for it traces back to the not-so-distant “Hagestalt,” and embedded within “Hagestalt” is the word “stalt.” What is “stalt”? A “stalt” is someone who is set aside somewhere. In medieval times, the older sons inherited the farmstead, and the younger sons inherited the “Hag.” And the younger son—who, for that reason, had fewer opportunities to marry than the older one—the younger son, who inherited only the “Hag,” an enclosed plot of land, was set aside. A “stalt” is the owner. The owner of the “Hag” is the “Hagestalt.” And only when the awareness of this “stalt” was lost did the people, through a phonetic resemblance, transform their “stalt” into “stolz” (pride); thus, the word “stolz” in this context must not be equated with our modern concept of “pride,” but is merely a phonetic resemblance. But in forms of the older language that have survived, one can still find the awareness of this stalt = “to be established.” In one of the “Christmas plays,” one of the innkeepers has to say the words: “I, as an innkeeper of my G’stalt, have authority in my house and lodging.” People think this means the ordinary “form.” No, that is not the meaning of the word, but rather: an innkeeper of my rank, an innkeeper who is placed in such a prestigious position, an innkeeper of my “Gestelltheit.” The exclamation, “I have authority over my house and domain,” means that he attracts guests. Here you can still see the awareness of what was originally contained within “Hagestalt.” And so we can trace many extraordinary and subtle aspects of linguistic genius when we contemplate the development of sound in this spiritual way.

[ 8 ] When the disciples marveled at the healing that Christ Jesus performed on the man suffering from gout, Ulfilas uses a word in his Bible translation that is related to silda-leik = “strange-light.” If one considers the entire context in Ulfilas’s translation where he uses this word, one would have to call what is taking shape there something like “the strangely formed.” It is the physical aspect that arouses the amazement. Expressed more objectively, this is: silda-leik. In the word leik, we must perceive: the form, but as an image. When one spoke of Gestalt in the earlier sense, this referred to the state of being set forth. In earlier times, this state of being set forth was expressed by the word Gestalt. The actual form itself, as it was once perceived as an image of something else, was expressed by leik. We still have this word in our “Leichnam” (corpse). “Leichnam,” the image of that which was there. It is expressed very subtly when one still senses what lies within the “Leich,” how the “Leich” is the image of the human being, not the human being itself.

[ 9 ] But now I would like to offer you further evidence of how, from the concrete, that which remains linguistically present in feeling—in the reproduction of the concrete—arises. For example, we learn from Ulfilas that the bride in Gothic is brütbs. And brüths, as it appears in Ulfilas’s Bible translation, is etymologically related to Brut (brood) and to the act of brooding, so that when a marriage takes place, the brood is simply established through the bride. The bride is what establishes the brood when a marriage takes place. Yes, and what about the groom? Here, something is added to the bride. This would be guma in Gothic, gomo in Old High German—a word formed through sound shifts from the Latin homo. In gam (groom), guma = gomo = homo; he is the bride’s husband, the man who, for his part, ensures the establishment of the brood. The groom is thus the bride’s husband. You can see from this that we must sometimes look precisely to the unassuming syllables in order to truly trace the language-forming power of linguistic genius.

[ 10 ] Well, it is a curious thing that in Ulfilas’s account, the word sa dumba = “the dull-witted one” appears in reference to the mute man whom Christ heals. And I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that Goethe also speaks of how he lived in a certain dullness during his youth. Dullness—not having the ability to fully comprehend one’s surroundings—living in dullness, in a fog; it prevents one, for example, from speaking, rendering one mute. But at the same time, this word later came to mean “stupid,” so that “stupid” is nothing other than being unable to look around freely, being in a state of dullness, in a fog. It is very remarkable, my dear friends, how certain transformations, metamorphoses of the verbal can occur, and how these transformations, these metamorphoses, reveal how the unconscious and the conscious interact within this remarkable entity that one might call linguistic genius, which expresses itself through the entirety of a people or tribe. Take, for example, the Norse god’s name Fjörgyn. This Norse god’s name takes on a peculiar light when, in the narrative where it is said that Christ went up the mountain with his disciples, we find in Ulfilas’s work the word fairguni as the Gothic word for “mountain.” We find this word, with a slightly shifted meaning, in the Old High German forha, which actually means “pine tree” or “pine mountain.” The deity Fjörgyn is the one who, as an elemental deity, dwells on the pine-covered mountains. This, however, is fundamentally related, and one can still sense it in faírguni—along with the Latin quercus (oak)—with which they likewise designated the tree.

[ 11 ] Now I would like to draw your attention to how, in earlier stages of language development, there was a certain subconscious connection between sound and meaning. Today, our abstract thinking gives us little opportunity to delve down into the realm of sound. We no longer sense the phonetic aspect at all; and people who know many languages become downright annoyed when they are expected to take the phonetic aspect into account. The most diverse words naturally have the most diverse correspondences, and the connection offered by lexicographical translation is merely an artificial one; for one must first follow the linguistic genius, which actually means something other than what can be directly rendered. In German we say Kopf = tête, testa in Romance languages. Why do we say Kopf in German? For the simple reason that in German we have a plastic genius, because we want to denote roundness. For Kopf is associated with sphericity, and we are essentially speaking from the same language-forming element when we speak of a cabbage head and a human head. “Kopf” denotes roundness. “Testa,” however, is connected to the inner essence of the human being—to testifying, bearing witness, and establishing. Thus, one must take into account that things are designated from different perspectives. One can still sense this even when one might speak inaccurately in specific instances—when one attempts to gradually return to older forms that manifest themselves within word formation. And one would ultimately return to that stage of linguistic genius where it is capable of perceiving the spirit in the sound itself. Where is the sense of unity between “mine” and “community” still felt? It is difficult to sense this today. If one looks, for example, at the community in Old High German, gimeinida, and then considers a further metamorphosis of this—mean in English, which is related to it—one arrives at an example in which one can sense in mein how it is related to what is meant in the harmony of the many, and derives its power from the fact that there are many. And this derivation of strength is expressed by the prefix \(gi\).

[ 12 ] So we must go back to what constitutes the emotional element inherent in language formation. When we say “taufen” today—which is an ancient Germanic word—we no longer truly sense what its actual meaning is. It becomes clear when we go back to Old and Middle High German and find, for example, toufan, toufen, töufen, and when we then discover that this towfan is just as closely related to diups as it is still present in Ulfila’s daupjan in connection with daupjands = “the Baptist.” Then, however, we need only look up the original cognate word tiof in Old High German—which in our modern language means “deep,” as in vertiefen (to deepen) or tiefen (to plunge)—and we find that taufen is related to it, meaning “to plunge into,” “to immerse in water.” It is simply a plunging into the water.

[ 13 ] These examples are meant only to guide us in examining the language-forming genius. It is particularly important to trace changes in meaning. An interesting shift in meaning is, for example, the following: Gothic hlaifs, Old High German leiba, Middle High German leip—all of which mean “bread” in the Old Germanic language. You see, “bread” has not remained the meaning of hlaifs. Hlaifs has become Laib, and only the form in which the bread is presented has remained. Whereas “hlaifs” used to mean “bread,” it has shifted to refer to the shape of the bread. One can still see this transformation, for example, by tracing the metamorphosis in Old English: “blaford,” which in an even older form was “hlafward” or “hlafweard” = the one who provides the bread. The hlaford was the person one had to turn to in order to obtain bread—the one who tended the bread, who had the right to cultivate the fields, bake bread, and in turn distribute bread to those who were not free people. And through gradual transformation—the “h” does not signify anything in particular—this evolved into the word “Lord.” “Lord” is the old “hlafward.” Equally interesting is its counterpart. While “hlaifs” became “loaf of bread,” a word was formed through metamorphosis that in Old English would have been “hlaefdige,” where the first part is nothing other than the loaf of bread; “dige” is derived from an action. When one kneads dough, one is doing what is implied in the word “dige”: “digan,” to knead, to work the dough. And if one traces this back to the person who performed this activity, one arrives at the lord’s wife. While the lord was the keeper of the bread, his wife was the bread-kneader, the bread-maker, the giver of bread. And from this, the word “lady” later emerged. “Lord” and “lady” are thus mysteriously connected to the loaf of bread. These two words still reveal what comes from the bread-giver, the bread-maker, and the bread-kneader, the bread-maker of ancient times.

[ 14 ] Thus, one must strive to truly grasp the difference between the abstract way we relate to language today and the concrete way that existed when people could still sense in sound what was at the same time the spirit, the soul—that which they sought to express.