The Genius of Language
GA 299
28 December 1919, Stuttgart
The Evolution of Language from an Organic Point of View
I would like to repeat what I told you yesterday: Please don't expect too much content from this very brief language study. I will make only a few remarks about the development of language in this improvised course. However, it is certainly worthwhile to stir up some thoughts on the subject, and perhaps from the way I present things, you will discover guidelines. I won't go into the usual facts, but I will try to show you a number of important ways to look at the life of language with a view to its organic evolving.
In my first lecture I referred to the development of our German language through “invasions” into its word-stock. We pointed to the significant one, which coincided with the streaming in of Christianity into northern cultures, and its consequences. Christianity did not simply bring in its own content; it brought this content in the form of word images. Considered outwardly, the folk religions of the northern and central European peoples were not at all similar to what came to them as a new religion; nor was it possible for them to grasp the content of Christianity with the words and sounds of northern and central Europe. Therefore, those who brought Christian concepts and Christian perceptions also brought their “word clothing.” We have cited a group of such words that were carried northward, we can say, on the wings of Christianity. In the same way, everything connected with schooling streamed northward, too, words like Schule ‘school' itself, Tafel ‘blackboard’, and so forth, with the exception of a few like Lesen, Buchstabe, Lehrer (see Lecture 1, pages 19-20). The former are of Latin origin, but have been integrated into the German language organization so thoroughly that no one today would recognize them as loan-words. I also described how later, beginning in the twelfth century, a new invasion arrived from the West, bringing in many language elements. After that came a Spanish wave and finally one from England, as late as the nineteenth century.
These examples will be elaborated on later, but they indicate that during the time Christianity and everything related to it were making their way northward, the genius of the language was still able to accept and transform it inwardly by means of the folk sensitivity in that region. I illustrated this unique fact not by a word pertaining to Christianity but by the connection of the word Schuster ‘shoemaker’, which seems so truly Germanic, with sutor: it is one and the same word (page 22-23). There was still so much speech-forming strength in the genius of the Germanic folk that it was possible to transform a word like sutor that belongs to the earliest invasion. The further we proceed from this to the next invasion, which was concerned with education, the more we find the sound of the word in German closer to the sound in Latin. And so it continued. Languages flowing in later found the German language spirit ever less capable of transforming whatever came toward it. Let us keep this in mind. It remains to be seen whether, in due time, such phrases as five o'clock tea will be changed; that is, whether the German language genius can develop over a relatively long span of time the power of more rapid transformation it possessed in early times. We will have to wait and see. At the moment, it is not important.
We must ask ourselves what significance it has for a people that its language-forming power is decreasing, at least temporarily; that in fact it no longer exists as it once was. You do find it more strongly today in dialects. For instance, we could search for the origin of a very strange word in the Austrian dialect: pakschierli or bakschierli. The Austrians sitting here certainly know it. You can quickly sense what pakschierli means: ‘a cunning little girl who bobs and curtseys when presented to strangers, a ‘charming little girl—that’s pakschierli—or a ‘funny little thing made of marzipan' that doesn't exactly make you laugh, but causes an inward state of being ready, if the impression you get grows a little, to burst out in a loud laugh. ‘A funny little thing made of marzipan'—that’s pakschierli Now what is this word? It is not really connected with the rest of the Austrian dialect, for it is none other than the German word possierlich ‘funny, cunning, cute’, a word that has been transformed.
In a way, then, this language-forming power can be studied in the dialects. It is also a good approach to the active, creative folk soul, and an understanding of the folk soul would contribute immeasurably toward an understanding of the cultural life of a country. It would lead back to what I referred to in The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity,1Rudolf Steiner, The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1992. which was ridiculed by such minds as the all-too well-known Professor Dessoir.2Max Dessoir (1867-1947). Author, Von Jenseits der Seele: Die Geisteswissenschaft in kritischer Betrachtung (Stuttgart, 1917). Spiritual science makes it possible to determine clearly what I described there: that the formation of consonant sounds in language is connected to an imitation of something externally perceptible. Consonants express for us what we have experienced inwardly of outside events. To put it more graphically: If you are setting in a fence post, you can feel this action inwardly by bearing down (aufstemmen, as ‘stem’ for skiers) on your foot. This is the perception of your own act of will. We no longer feel this inner act of will in the sound [št, pronounced sht] of aufstemmen, but in the early age of language development, you did feel in your acts of will an imitation of what was happening outside yourself. The consonant element has thus become the imitation of events outside the human being, while the vowel element expresses what is truly an inner feeling. ‘Ah!" is our astonishment, a standing back, in a sense. The relationship of the human being to the outer world is expressed in the vowels. It is necessary to go back a long way in time if one wants to penetrate to these things, but it is possible to do so; then one arrives at the insight that such theories as the “bow-wow” or “ding-dong” theories are horribly wrong. They are incorrect and superficial. An understanding of the human being, however, can lead us toward discovering inwardly how a speech sound is connected with whatever we want to reveal of soul and spirit. Let us consider this as a question to ask ourselves, in order to find answers during the course of this study. In order to look rightly at the many and varied links in the chain of language, I will try to find characteristic examples to help us reach what we are trying to understand.
Today I should like to take some examples to show how language proceeds slowly from the concrete to the abstract. If we really want to study actual facts, turning to dialect again will be helpful. Let me mention one small example:
When Austrian peasants get up in the morning, they will say something about their Nachtschlaf ‘night sleep’ but not at all as you are apt to speak about it. You think of it basically as something quite abstract, for you are educated people. Austrian peasants are close to nature. To them, all that surrounds them partakes of spirit and soul, and they have a strong awareness of it. Even for them this is dying out now, but in the seventies and eighties of the last century, it was still very much present for anyone who, like me, wished to observe it. Even though peasants may still perceive the elemental forces in everything around them, they will never express it in abstractions but always concretely. A peasant will say, ‘I have to wipe the night sleep (Nachtschlaf) out of my eyes To peasants the substance excreted from the eyes during the night that can be washed away, is the visible expression of sleep; they call it Nachtschlaf To understand language that was still quite alive a short time ago, there is this secret: a factual understanding is not at all hindered by finding spiritual elements linked up with it. Austrian peasants are in fact thinking of an elemental being, but they express this by describing its action, that it put an excretion into their eyes. Never would they take this word as the abstraction arrived at by an educated person. However, if peasants have gone to school a little while or have been exposed to the city, they have a way of addressing themselves to an invisible, concrete fact. They will still say, ‘T must wipe the night sleep out of my eyes,” but at the same time they will make a sort of gesture to imply that for them it is something really superficial and yet concrete.
We should be aware that such an observation leads us to realize that an abstract term always points back to something more concrete. Take the following example. In the Scandinavian countries you still find the word barn for ‘child’ [Scotland and northern England, bairn]; we no longer have it in German. What is its history? On one hand, it leads us back to the Gothic; we will find it in Ulfilas’s Bible translation,3Ulfilas or Wulfila (Little Wolf) 331-383. Bishop of the Goths. He is said to have invented the alphabet he used in order to translate the Bible. It is our only remnant of the Gothic language, which became extinct in 400 A.D. where we find the expression bairan, meaning ‘to bear’. If we know the law of consonant shift, discovered by Jakob Grimm,4Jakob Grimm (1785--1863), German philologist and creator of Grimm's law. Interested principally in the relationship between the various Germanic languages, he was one of the great founders of comparative philology. He wrote German Grammar, German Mythology and—with his brother Wilhelm—the famous collection of German folk and household tales. The Brothers Grimm also planned and inaugurated the great German dictionary. for the Germanic languages and for all those related to them [see lecture 3, page 41-42], we will go back from the Gothic bairan to pherō in Greek and fero in Latin, both meaning ‘to carry’ or ‘to bear’. A /b/ in Germanic appears in Greek and Latin as /f/ or /ph/. Bairan is simply a Germanic sound-shift from fero; the word widens out into a different direction. There exists the Old High German word beran, ‘to carry’ [beran is also the Anglo-Saxon forerunner of English ‘to bear’. The barrow of ‘wheelbarrow’ goes back to beran.]. Gradually the verbal aspect of the word receded; in modern German we no longer have the possibility of thinking back to the original, strongly felt, active meaning. Why is the child called barn in Scandinavia? Because it is being borne or carried before it comes into the world. A child is something that is carried: we look back at our origin. The only word left over from all this in modern German is gebären ‘to bear, give birth'.
But we do have something else—we have retained the suffix -bar. You will find that in fruchtbar ‘fertile’, kostbar ‘costly’, ‘precious’ and other words. What is kostbar?—that which carries a cost. What is fruchtbar?—that which bears fruit. It was expressed very graphically, not as an abstraction as it would be today, for the actual carrying, bearing was visualized.
You can imagine this quite vividly when you say something is becoming ruchbar ‘known’, ‘notorious’, not always in the most positive sense; literally, ‘smell bearing’. When a smell is being carried toward you, a matter is becoming ruchbar. For many words like this we should be able to find the clear, direct imagery that in ancient times characterized the language-forming genius.
I will write down for you a phrase from Ulfilas’s Bible translation:
jah witands Jêsus thôs mitônins izê qath
This means approximately, ‘And Jesus, knowing their thoughts, spoke thus.” [Note qath = Anglo-Saxon, cwaeth/ quoth.] The word mitonins means ‘thoughts’ and this takes us to miton, meaning roughly ‘to think’. In Old High German it grew into something different: mezzôn; related to this is the word mezzan which means messen ‘to measure’. Measuring, the outer visible act of measuring, experienced inwardly, simply becomes thinking. Thus an action carried out outside ourselves has provided the foundation for the word thinking ‘I am thinking’ actually means: ‘T am measuring something in my soul’. This in turn is related to the Latin word meditor and the Greek medomai, which have given us ‘meditate’.
Whenever we go back in time and observe the genius of language at work, we find this presence of imagery, but we must also try to observe it with inner understanding. You all know the term Hagesfolz ‘a confirmed bachelor’; you know its approximate meaning today. However, the connection of this word with what it meant formerly is very interesting. It goes back to the word Hagestalt, in which the word Stalt is embedded [modern German retained only the word Gestalt: ‘figure, form, stature’]. What is Stalt? It is a person who has been put, placed, or ‘stood’ somewhere. According to medieval custom, the oldest son inherited the farm; the younger son got only the hedged-in field, the Hag. The younger son, therefore, who only owned the Hag was placed or ‘stood’ in this fenced-in field, and was often not able to marry. The stalt is the owner. The ‘hedge’ owner is the Hagestalt. As awareness of the word stalt gradually disappeared, people turned stalt into stolz (proud). It has no connection with the modern word stolz (proud); there is simply a resemblance of sounds. But an awareness of this stalt ‘placed or stood’ can be found in other, older examples still in existence, for instance in the Oberufer Nativity Play.5A.C. Harwood, Christmas Plays from Oberufer (Bristol, England: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1993). One of the innkeepers says I als ein Wirt von meiner G'stalt, hab in mei’ Haus und Losament G'walt [I, an innkeeper of my stature—or an innkeeper placed here—take full charge in my house]. People think he means physical stature, but what he really means is ‘Placed in this respected house, stood here...." With the words that follow, “Take full charge,” he means that he attracts his guests. There is still the consciousness in G'stalt of what originally was in Hagestalt. We should follow with our whole inner being the development of words and sounds in this way, in order to ponder inwardly the unusual and delicate effects of the genius of language.
In the New Testament, describing how the disciples were astonished at Christ’s healing of the man sick of the palsy, Ulfilas uses a word in his translation related to silda-leik = selt-sam-leich ‘seldom-like’. Considering the way Ulfilas uses this word in the context of his Bible translation, we discover that he means here—for what has been accomplished by Christ—das Seltsamgestaltete ‘that which has been formed miraculously'. It is the bodily-physical element that arouses astonishment at this point. This is expressed more objectively in silda-leik. In the word leik we must sense: it is the gestalt, the form, but as an image. If the word gestalt were used in the earlier sense, it would be to express ‘being placed’. The form (Gestalt today), as it earlier was felt, described the image of a thing and was expressed by leik. We have this word in leichnam ‘corpse’. A corpse is the image of what was once there. It is a subtle expression when you sense what lies in this Leich, how the Leich is not a human being but the ‘likeness’ of one.
There are further examples I can bring you for the development of terms springing from visual imagery to express a quality of soul. We learn from Ulfilas that in the Gothic language ‘bride’ is brûths. This bruths in the Bible translation is closely related to ‘brood’ (Brut), so that when a marriage is entered upon, the brood is being provided. The “bride” is the one who ensures the ‘brood’. Well then, what is the Bräutigam (the ‘bridegroom’)? Something is added to the bride; this is in Gothic guma, in Old High German gomo [in Anglo-Saxon, guma), derived by consonant shift from the Latin word homo, ‘man’, ‘the man of the bride’, the man who for his part provides for the brood [the addition of /r/ in the English groom is due to confusion with, or substitution of groom, servant]. You see, we have to look at the unassuming syllables sometimes if we really wish to follow the genius of language in its active forming of language.
Now it is remarkable that in Ulfilas’s translation the Gothic sa dumba ‘der Dumpfe’, ‘the dull one’, appears, denoting the man unable to speak, the dumb man whom the Christ heals (Matthew 9:32). With this, I would like to remind you that Goethe has told us how in his youth he existed in a certain kind of Dumpfheit ‘dullness’. “Dullness” is a state of being unable to see clearly through one’s surroundings, to live in shadows, in fogginess; this hinders, for one thing, the capacity for speech, renders mute. Later this word became dumm, took the meaning of ‘dumb’ or ‘stupid’, so that this dumb means nothing more than ‘not able to look about freely’ or ‘to live in dullness’ or ‘in a fog.” It is truly extraordinary, my dear friends, how many changes and transformations of a word can exist.6See also Rudolf Steiner, Spiritual Relations in the Human Organism, lecture 2 (Spring Valley, NY: Mercury Press, 1984). These changes and recastings show how the conscious and the unconscious are interwoven in the marvelous being called the genius of language that expresses itself through the totality of a folk, tribe, or people.
There is, for instance, the name of the Nordic god Fjögyn. This name appears in a clarifying light through Ulfilas’s use of the word fairguni as Gothic for ‘mountain’, in telling of Christ’s “going up into the mountain” with his disciples. Its meaning shifted a little but we still find the word in Old High German as forha, meaning ‘fir tree’ or ‘fir mountain’. Fjögyn is the elemental god or goddess who resides on the fir mountain. This in turn (and we can sense it in fairguni) is related to the Latin word quercus ‘oak tree’, which also names the tree.
I should like to point out how in earlier ages of languageforming there prevailed—though somewhat subconsciously—a connection between sound and meaning. Nowadays it is almost impossible for us with our abstract thinking to reach down to the speech sounds. We no longer have a feeling for the sound quality of words. People who know many languages are downright annoyed if they are expected to consider anything about speech sounds. Words in general have the most varied transitions of form and meaning, of course; translations following only the dictionary are artificial and pedantic. First of all, we should follow the genius of language, which really has something other in mind than what seems obvious at first glance.
In German we say Kopf ‘head’; in the Romance languages it is testa, tête. Why do we say Kopf? Simply because in German we have a sculptural language genius and we want to express the roundness of the head. Kopf is related to kugelig ‘spherical’, and whether we speak of Kohlkopf ‘cabbage head’ or human Kopf it has originated from the same language-molding process. Kopf expresses what is round. Testa, however, ‘head’ in Latin, denotes something in our inner being: testifying, ascertaining, determining. We always have to consider that things may be named from various points of view. One can still feel this—though it’s possible to miss the details—if we try to trace our way back to older forms from which the present word originated. Finally we arrive far back in time when the genius of language was able to sense the spiritual life within the sounds themselves.
Who can still sense that meinen ‘to mean’ and Gemeinde ‘community, parish’ belong together? Nowadays this is difficult to perceive. In Old High German Gemeinde is gimeinida. 1f you look at a further metamorphosis to mean as an English cognate [Anglo-Saxon, maenan, ‘to recite, to tell' and AngloSaxon, gemaene, ‘common, general’], it is evident that gemeinida expresses what is ‘meant’ or ‘arrived at’ by several people in common; it derives strength from the fact that several people are involved. And this act of receiving strength is expressed by adding such a prefix as gi- [related to Anglo-Saxon be-, in bedazzle, behold, and so forth. In modern German ge- is the prefix of most past participles.].
We have to reach back and try to find the element of feeling in the forming of speech. Today when we say taufen, an ancient German word, ‘to baptize’, we no longer have a feeling for what it really is. We get more of a picture when we go back to Old and Middle High German, where we find toufan, toufen, töufen and find this related to diups [who can resist finding a connection to dip, Anglo-Saxon, dyppan?], and in Ulfilass daupjan related to daupjands, the Baptist. We have in Old High German the close cognate tiof in Modern German tief ‘deep’'—so there we have the relationship taufen ... hineintiefen ... tauchen ‘dip in, dive in’. It is simply a dipping into the water.
These things should help us to look carefully at the language-forming genius. Observing changes of meaning is especially important. In the following example there is an interesting shift of meaning. ‘Bread” was in Gothic hlaifs Old High German leiba, Middle High German leip, Anglo-Saxon, hlaf modern German das Brot. Hlaifs/hlaf has not retained the meaning ‘bread’; it has changed into laib/loaf. It means now only the form in which bread is made; earlier it was the bread itself.
You can observe this change of meaning in the metamorphosis from Old English hlaford from the earlier hlafweard, ‘bread keeper or guard.” The hlaford was the person who wards or guards the bread, the one you had to ask if you wanted bread, who watched over the bread, had the right to plant the field, make the bread, give the bread to those who were not freemen. And by means of a gradual transformation—the /h/ is lost—the word lord developed; ‘lord’ is the old hlafweard.
The companion word is equally interesting. Whereas hlaifs becomes ‘loaf of bread’, another word appeared through metamorphosis: hlaefdige in Old English. The first part of the word is again ‘loaf of bread’; dige developed from an activity. If dough (Anglo-Saxon dag Modern German Teig is being kneaded, this activity is expressed in the word dige, digan, to knead dough. If you seek the person who carries out this activity, you will arrive at the wife of the lord. The lord was the bread-warden; his wife was the bread-kneader, bread-giver. The word ‘lady’ grew out of hlaefdjge. In a mysterious way, ‘lord’ and ‘lady’ are related to the loaf of bread and show their origin as ‘bread-warden’ and ‘bread-kneader’.
We must really try to grasp the difference between our modern abstract attitude toward language and one that was truly alive in earlier times. People felt then that speech-sounds carried in themselves the spirit qualities, the soul qualities, that human beings wanted to communicate.
Zweiter Vortrag
Auch heute möchte ich wiederum ein paar Worte vorausschicken, wie ich das schon vor dem ersten Vortrag getan habe. Ich bitte Sie durchaus, an diese paar Stunden, die ich dieser Angelegenheit hier widmen kann, nicht zu große Hoffnungen zu knüpfen; zunächst nicht inhaltlich. Es wird ja auf der anderen Seite bedeutungsvoll sein, eine Anregung in dieser Sache zu geben. Aber bei der improvisierten Art, wie das hier zustande gekommen ist, kann es sich bei dem, was hier über die Sprachentwickelung gesagt werden soll, wirklich auch um nichts anderes handeln als um einige improvisierte Dinge. Und wir werden vielleicht nur aus der Art und Weise, die ich in den Besprechungen einhalten werde, eine Richtschnur empfangen. Ich werde mich an nichts Gebräuchliches halten, sondern versuchen, Sie auf mancherlei hinzuweisen, das wichtig werden wird für eine organische Betrachtung des sprachlichen Lebens.
Im ersten Vortrag habe ich darauf hingewiesen, wie gerade unsere deutsche Sprache eine Entwickelung dadurch durchgemacht hat, daß ihr Wortbestand gewissermaßen Invasionen erfahren hat. Wir haben auf eine solche bedeutungsvolle große Invasion verweisen können: auf diejenige, die mit dem Einströmen des Christentums in die nordischen Kulturen gekommen ist mit alldem, was sich an dieses Einströmen des Christentums angeschlossen hat. Das Christentum hat ja nicht bloß eben seinen Inhalt gebracht, sondern diesen Inhalt in Wortbildern gebracht. Und so wenig auch, nur äußerlich genommen, in den Volksreligionen der nord- und mitteleuropäischen Bevölkerung etwas war von dem, was das Christentum brachte, ebensowenig war die Möglichkeit da, mit dem Wortbestand der Leute Nord- und Mitteleuropas das Christentum aufzufassen. Daher wurden von seinen Trägern mit dem Christentum zugleich die christlichen Vorstellungen und christlichen Empfindungen und alles das, was die Wortkleider sind, gebracht. Wir haben ja eine Summe von solchen Dingen angeführt, die gewissermaßen auf den Flügeln des Christentums sprachlich nach Norden getragen worden sind. Dann aber ist auch alles das, was die Schule betrifft, mit einer von Süden nach Norden gehenden Strömung gekommen. Wörter, die sich auf Schulmäßiges beziehen, wie Schule und Tafel und so weiter - außer etwa Lesen oder Buchstabe oder Lehrer -, sind vom Süden heraufgekommen, sind eigentlich romanisch-lateinischen Ursprunges und sind so dem deutschen Sprachorganismus einverleibt worden, daß heute der Mensch nicht mehr bewußt daran denkt, daß er mit solchen Dingen im Grunde genommen Fremdwörter im deutschen Sprachorganismus hat. Ich habe dann darauf hinweisen können, wie später vom Westen herüber, vom 12. Jahrhundert an wiederum eine neue Invasion von vielem Sprachlichen gekommen ist. Und dann wies ich Sie hin auf eine spanische Welle und zuletzt auf das, was eigentlich erst im 19. Jahrhundert gekommen ist: auf alles das, was von England her eingewandert ist.
An den Beispielen, die ich Ihnen gegeben habe — und diese Dinge sollen später genauere Ausgestaltungen erfahren -, können Sie vorläufig ersehen, daß in jenen alten Zeiten, in denen zunächst das Christentum und mit ihm manches andere seinen Einzug gehalten hat, der Sprachgenius noch die Möglichkeit gehabt hat, innerlich nach dem Volksempfinden dasjenige in sich aufzunehmen und umzugestalten, was da gekommen ist. Es ist zwar nicht an einem spezifischen, dem Christentum angehörigen Worte auf das Eigentümliche dieser Tatsache hingewiesen worden, sondern auf die Verwandtschaft des, wie man meint, urdeutschen Wortes Schuster mit sutor. Es ist ein und dasselbe Wort. Es ist einfach noch so viel sprachbildende Kraft im Genius des deutschen Volkstums enthalten gewesen, daß man ein Wort so umgestalten konnte. Sutor gehört zu der ältesten Invasion. Je weiter man von dieser ältesten Invasion zu der nächsten geht, die sich mehr auf das Schulwesen bezieht, desto mehr wird man schon finden, daß der Wortklang, wie er im Deutschen ist, ähnlich ist dem Lateinischen. Und so geht es weiter. Mit den später eintretenden Sprachströmungen zeigt es sich, daß der eigene deutsche Sprachgeist immer unfähiger ist, dasjenige, was da auftritt, umzubilden. Das wollen wir festhalten. Ob im Laufe der Zeit auch Five o’clock tea umgewandelt wird, also ob der deutsche Sprachgenius in verhältnismäßig langer Zeit so etwas wie eine umbildende Kraft zu entwickeln imstande ist, wie er es in kürzerer Zeit früher entwickelt hat, das muß abgewartet werden, und das ist für unser Ziel nicht bedeutend.
Wir wollen uns nämlich zuletzt die Frage vorlegen, was es für das ganze Volksleben für eine Bedeutung hat, daß die innere sprachbildende Kraft, wenigstens zeitweilig, abnimmt, also für den Augenblick heute nicht so vorhanden ist wie früher. Diese sprachbildende Kraft ist heute noch in um so stärkerem Maße vorhanden, je mehr man in die Dialekte hinuntersteigt. So zum Beispiel kann man nach dem Ursprung eines höchst eigentümlichen Wortes fragen, das im österreichischen Dialekt sich findet: pakschierli, oder bakschierli. Die Österreicher werden es wohl kennen. Man kann unmittelbar empfinden, was pakschierli ist: ein kleines Mädchen, das, wenn es fremden Leuten vorgeführt wird, ein bissel tänzelt, allerlei vormacht, was in der Sphäre des Artigen bleibt — das ist pakschierli. Oder sagen wir, ein kleines Marzipandingelchen, das nicht gerade zum Lachen, aber zu jenem inneren Seelenzustand Veranlassung gibt, welcher charakterisiert werden kann als: man lacht noch nicht; würde der Eindruck nach derselben Richtung stärker werden, so würde man erst lachen müssen. Solch ein Marzipandingelchen, das wäre pakschierli. Was ist das für ein Wort? Es hat keinen rechten Zusammenhang mit der übrigen Dialektsprache. Es ist nichts anderes als das umgebildete possierlich. Diese sprachbildende Kraft kann man also in den Dialekten in gewisser Weise noch studieren; es ist auch ein gutes Mittel für das Eingehen auf die wirkende Volksseele, solche Dinge zu studieren. Und es würde ungeheuer viel dazu beitragen können, auch das Geistesleben zu verstehen, wenn man auf die Volksseele eingehen könnte. Dann würde man zurückkommen zu dem, worauf ich in meiner Schrift: «Die geistige Führung des Menschen und der Menschheit» aufmerksam gemacht habe, und worüber sich solche Geister, wie der Ihnen sattsam bekannte Professor Dessoir, lustig machten. Durch Geisteswissenschaft kann auch klar gefunden werden, was ich da ausgeführt habe: daß die Konsonantenbildung zusammenhängt mit einer Nachbildung dessen, was äußerlich anschaulich wird. Was in Konsonanten ausgedrückt wird, das entsteht ursprünglich dadurch, daß man als Mensch mit sich selbst die Erfahrung macht, die ähnlich dem ist, was äußerlich geschieht. Populär ausgedrückt, könnte ich sagen: Wenn man einen Pfahl eingräbt, so kann man das Eingraben dieses Pfahles dadurch empfinden, daß man einen Fuß aufstemmt. Das ist das Wahrnehmen eines eigenen Willensaktes. Diesen Willensakt fühlen wir heute nicht mehr in dem Sprachlaut \(st.\) Aber in früheren Zeiten der Sprachentwickelung fühlte man in den eigenen Willenstätigkeiten Nachahmungen desjenigen, was draußen geschah. Und so wurde das konsonantische Element die Nachahmung dessen, was draußen geschah, während das vokalische Element dasjenige ist, was das Innere zum Ausdruck bringt. \(A\) ist das Erstaunen, das Zurückziehen in gewisser Weise. Es ist das Verhältnis des Menschen zur Außenwelt, das in den Vokalen zum Ausdruck kommt. Man muß weit zurückgehen, wenn man bis zu diesen Dingen vordringen will; aber man kann bis zu ihnen vordringen, und dann kommt man dazu, einzusehen, daß diejenigen Theorien, die rein äußerlich auf Hypothesen beruhen, wie die sogenannte «Wau-Wau»- oder «Bim-Bam»-Theorie, ganz furchtbare Abirrungen sind. Sie sind Äußerlichkeiten, während das Verständnis des Menschen selber durchaus dazu führen kann, innerlich den Zusammenhang des Lautes mit dem, was seelisch-geistig zur Anschauung kommen will, kennenzulernen. Wir wollen das zunächst als eine Frage uns vorlegen, die wir im Laufe dieser Stunden beantworten wollen. Um in der richtigen Weise die verschiedenen Verkettungen der Sprachelemente in diesem Lichte zu betrachten, müssen wir an einzelnen Beispielen, die ich versuche, charakteristisch aus dem Sprachlichen herauszuholen, uns allmählich zu demjenigen hinaufranken, was wir eigentlich verstehen wollen.
Ich möchte solche Beispiele heute wählen, welche Ihnen zeigen können, wie das Sprachliche allmählich aus dem Konkreten in das Abstrakte vordringt. Auch da hilft uns, wenn wir wirklich den guten Willen haben, das Reale zu studieren, manchmal die Hinwendung zu dem Dialekt. Ich will nur ein kleines Beispiel da erwähnen. Der österreichische Bauer, wenn er des Morgens aufgestanden ist, so spricht er von dem Nachtschlaf, aber nicht so, wie wahrscheinlich Sie von dem Nachtschlaf sprechen. Sie verstehen im Grunde genommen etwas sehr Abstraktes darunter, denn Sie sind gebildete Kulturmenschen. Der österreichische Bauer ist ein Naturmensch: in aliem, was rings ihn umgibt, steckt ihm Geistiges und Seelisches, und er hatte ein starkes Bewußtsein davon. Jetzt verglimmt es ja auch bei ihm, aber in den siebziger und achtziger Jahren des vorigen Jahrhunderts war es ja durchaus noch vorhanden für jemanden, der es so beobachten wollte wie ich. Weil der Bauer überall in allen Dingen drinnen noch die Elementarkräfte sieht, so drückt er sich niemals in eigentlichen Abstraktionen aus, sondern immer in concreto. Der Bauer sagt: Ich wische mir den Nachtschlaf aus den Augen. — Was sich im Auge während der Nacht absondert und herausgewaschen werden kann, das ist ihm der sichtbarliche Ausdruck des Schlafes, das nennt er den Nachtschlaf. Das ist das Geheimnis des Sprachverständnisses, das vor kurzem noch lebendig wirkte: es hindert dieses dinghafte Verstehen durchaus nicht, daß damit Geistiges verbunden ist. Der österreichische Bauer denkt durchaus an ein Elementarwesen, aber er drückt es durch die Tat aus, daß es ihm da diese Absonderung in die Augen getrieben hat. Er würde unter dem Wort niemals das Abstraktum verstehen, das der gebildete Kulturmensch darunter versteht. Dann fängt die Geschichte an, sich etwas zu abstrahieren: Wenn der Bauer ein klein wenig in die Schule gegangen ist, oder aber mit der Stadt in Berührung gekommen ist, dann wird gewissermaßen ein unsichtbar Konkretes von ihm angerufen. Er sagt noch immer: Ich wische mir den Nachtschlaf aus den Augen -, aber er macht mehr die Handbewegung, um anzudeuten, daß es für ihn etwas sehr äußerlich konkret Reales ist.
Nun handelt es sich darum, daß uns eine solche Beobachtung dazu führt, hinzuschauen, wie im Grunde genommen das abstrakt gesprochene Sprachliche in immer Konkreteres zurückweist. Nehmen Sie folgendes Beispiel. Bei uns ist das verschwunden, aber in skandinavi sehen Ländern finden Sie noch den Ausdruck barn für Kind. Wir haben den Ausdruck nicht mehr. Was hat der Ausdruck für eine Geschichte? Der Ausdruck führt uns zurück auf der einen Seite ins Gotische, wo wir ihn bei Ulfilas finden in seiner Bibelübersetzung. Er führt uns zurück zu dem Ausdruck baíran = tragen. Das wiederum ist verwandt sowohl mit dem Griechischen wie mit dem Lateinischen. Es ist so verwandt, daß man die Verwandtschaft sehr deutlich erkennt, wenn man jenes Gesetz der Lautverschiebung anwendet, das für die germanischen Sprachen und ihre Verwandtschaft mit anderen Sprachen durch Jakob Grimm gefunden worden ist. Dieses Gesetz stellt fest: Was als \(b\) in der einen Sprache vorhanden ist, ist als \(f\) in der anderen vorhanden. Ich will nur das eine Beispiel herausheben. Dadurch kommen wir aber für den Ausdruck bairan im Griechischen auf phero und im Lateinischen auf fero, die beide auch die Bedeutung von tragen, bringen, mehr bintragen, haben. Das bairan ist nur eine Umbildung von fero, es wächst sich das Wort nach einer anderen Richtung aus. Nun ist noch althochdeutsch beran vorhanden. Allmählich verschwindet dasjenige, was hier Verbalbildung ist; und wir haben im Deutschen nicht mehr eine rechte Möglichkeit, auf die ursprünglich gefühlte, empfundene Bedeutung zurückzudenken. Wir sehen auf das Wort barn = Kind hin; warum? Weil es getragen wird, bevor es geboren wird. Es ist das Getragene, das Kind. Man weist also auf seinen Ursprung hin; man nennt ein Kind das Getragene — baíran = fero. Wir haben in der deutschen Sprache in dieser Zusammensetzung nur noch davon das Wort gebären. Aber wir haben etwas anderes; wir haben als Überrest von all dem jene Nachsilbe bekommen, die wir in fruchtbar, kostbar und so weiter haben. Was heißt kostbar? Dasjenige, was die Kosten trägt. Was heißt fruchtbar? Dasjenige, was die Frucht trägt. Das wurde sehr anschaulich ausgedrückt, nicht in der Abstraktion, wie wir es heute haben, sondern es wurde an das konkrete Tragen gedacht. Besonders anschaulich kann Ihnen das sein, wenn Sie sagen: Etwas wird ruchbar, weil es einen Geruch zu Ihnen trägt. Der Geruch wird zu Ihnen getragen; dadurch wird irgendeine Sache ruchbar. So würden wir in vielem die unmittelbare Anschaulichkeit finden, die das Charakteristische ist des sprachbildenden Genius in sehr alten Zeiten. Ich will Ihnen eine Zeile aus der Bibelübersetzung des Ulfilas hinschreiben: jah witands Jêsus thôs mitônins izê qath. Das würde etwa sein: Und Jesus, ihre Gedanken wissend, sprach. Hier finden Sie das Wort mitônins = Gedanken. Das führt uns zurück auf das Wort mitôn, das ungefähr denken bedeutet. Im Althochdeutschen hat es sich schon anders ausgewachsen; da heißt es mezzôn, und zu dem ist ein verwandtes Wort vorhanden, das Wort mezzan, und das heißt messen. Messen, das äußere Messen, das anschauliche Messen, ist einfach, innerlich gefühlt, denken geworden. Also eine äußerlich zu verrichtende Tätigkeit hat die Grundlage abgegeben für das Wort denken. Ich denke, heißt eigentlich: Ich messe seelisch etwas. Das aber ist verwandt mit dem lateinischen meditor, das wir noch im Meditieren haben, im Griechischen medomai. Wenn wir in ältere Formen des Wirkens des deutschen oder germanischen Sprachgenius zurückgehen, dann finden wir, wie das noch durchaus anschaulich vorhanden ist; aber wir müssen eben dieses wirklich mit innerem Verständnis vollführen.
Sie alle kennen das Wort Hagestolz, Sie wissen, was Hagestolz ungefähr in der heutigen Sprache für eine Bedeutung hat. Aber interessant ist doch der Zusammenhang dieses Wortes mit dem, was dieses Wort früher eigentlich bedeutet hat. Es ist eigentlich nur durch einen Bedeutungswandel das geworden, was es heute ist; denn es führt auf ein gar nicht weit zurückliegendes Hagestalt zurück, und in diesem Hagestalt steckt das Wort stalt darinnen. Was ist stalt? Stalt ist einer, der irgendwo hingestellt ist. In mittelalterlichen Verhältnissen erbten die älteren Söhne den Hof und die jüngeren Söhne den Hag. Und.der jüngere Sohn, der deshalb auch weniger heiraten konnte als der ältere, der jüngere Sohn, der nur den Hag, ein umfriedetes Gelände, erbte, der war dahingestellt. Stalt ist der Besitzer. Der Hagbesitzer ist der Hagestalt. Und das Volk hat nur, als das Bewußtsein verlorengegangen ist von diesem stalt, im Lautanklang sein stalt zu stolz gemacht, so daß das Wort stolz in diesem Zusammenhang gar nicht verglichen werden darf mit unserem Stolz, sondern es ist nur ein Lautanklang. Aber in Gestalten älterer Sprache, die noch geblieben sind, kann man das Bewußtsein von diesem stalt = gestellt sein, noch finden. In einem der «Weihnachtspiele» hat einer der Wirte die Worte zu sprechen: I als ein Wirt von meiner G’stalt, hab in mei’ Haus und Losament G’walt. Da meinen die Leute, es bedeute die gewöhnliche Gestalt. Nein, das ist nicht die Bedeutung des Wortes, sondern: ein Wirt von meinem Rang, ein Wirt, der an einen so angesehenen Platz gestellt ist, ein Wirt von meiner Gestelltheit. Mit dem Ruf: Hab in mei’ Haus und Losament G’walt, ist gemeint, daß er Gäste anzieht. Da sehen Sie noch das Bewußtsein von dem, was ursprünglich in Hagestalt drinnen ist. Und so können wir manches Außerordentliche und Feine im Sprachgenius verfolgen, wenn wir in dieser Weise seelisch das Werden des Lautlichen in Betracht ziehen.
Als sich die Jünger verwunderten über die Heilung, die der Christus Jesus an dem Gichtbrüchigen vollzog, da gebraucht Ulfilas in seiner Bibelübersetzung das Wort, das zusammenhängt mit silda-leik = seltsam-leich. Wenn man den ganzen Zusammenhang bei Ulfilas in der Übersetzung nimmt, wo er dieses Wort gebraucht, so müßte man das, was sich da gestaltet, etwa das Seltsamgestaltete nennen. Das Leibliche ist es, was die Verwunderung erregt. Es ist dies mehr objektiv ausgedrückt: silda-leik. Wir müssen in dem Worte leik fühlen: die Gestalt, aber als ein Abbild. Sagte man Gestalt in dem früheren Sinne, so war dies das Gestelltsein. Das Gestelltsein wurde in früheren Zeiten in dem Wort Gestalt ausgedrückt. Die eigentliche Gestalt selber, wie sie einst empfunden wurde als Abbild von etwas anderem, wurde durch leik ausgedrückt. Wir haben dieses Wort noch in unserem Leichnam. Leichnam, das Abbild desjenigen, was da war. Es ist sehr fein ausgedrückt, wenn man noch empfindet, was in dem Leich liegt, wie das Leich das Abbild des Menschen ist, nicht der Mensch selbst.
Nun aber möchte ich Ihnen noch weiteres anführen dafür, wie aus dem Anschaulichen heraus dasjenige entsteht, was im Gefühl, im Wiedergeben des Anschaulichen eben sprachlich noch da ist. Wir lernen zum Beispiel aus dem Ulfilas, daß die Braut im Gotischen brütbs ist. Und brüths, wie es uns in der Bibelübersetzung des Ulfilas auftritt, das ist urverwandt mit der Brut, mit Brüten, so daß, wenn geheiratet wird, einfach die Brut festgelegt wird durch die Braut. Die Braut ist das, was die Brut festlegt, wenn geheiratet wird. Ja, und der Bräutigam jetzt? Da kommt zu der Braut etwas hinzu. Dieses wäre gotisch guma, althochdeutsch gomo, was durch Lautverschiebung eines Wortes entstanden ist, das im Lateinischen als homo auftritt. In gam von Bräutigam istguma = gomo = homo, ist der Mann der Braut, der Mann, der seinerseits für die Begründung der Brut sorgt. Der Bräutigam ist also der Mann der Braut. Sie sehen daraus, daß wir gerade in den anspruchslosen Silben zuweilen suchen müssen, um das Sprachbildende des Sprachgenius wirklich zu verfolgen.
Nun, es ist eine merkwürdige Sache, daß bei Ulfilas für den Stummen, den der Christus heilt, das Wort sa dumba = der Dumpfe auftritt. Und ich möchte Sie bei dieser Gelegenheit erinnern, daß Goethe noch davon spricht, wie er in seiner Jugend in einer gewissen Dumpfheit gelebt hat. Dumpfheit — nicht die Möglichkeit haben, die Umgebung vollständig zu durchschauen -, in Dumpfheit, in Nebligkeit leben; sie verhindert zum Beispiel zu sprechen, macht stumm. Aber es ist dieses Wort zu gleicher Zeit später zu dumm geworden, so daß dieses dumm gar nichts anderes als nicht frei herumschauen können ist, im Dumpfen, im Nebligen sein. Es ist sehr merkwürdig, meine lieben Freunde, wie man gewisse Umformungen, Metamorphosen des Wortlichen haben kann, und wie diese Umformungen, diese Metamorphosen zeigen, wie Unbewußtes und Bewußtes durcheinanderwirken in diesem merkwürdigen Wesen, das man Sprachgenius nennen kann, das sich durch die Gesamtheit eines Volkes oder Stammes ausdrückt. Sie haben zum Beispiel den nordischen Götternamen Fjörgyn. Dieser nordische Göttername erfährt eine eigentümliche Beleuchtung, wenn wir in der Erzählung, da wo gesagt wird, daß der Christus mit seinen Jüngern auf den Berg ging, bei Ulfilas das Wort fairguni als gotisch für Berg finden. Wir finden dieses Wort, etwas verschoben in seiner Bedeutung, noch im althochdeutschen forha, das eigentlich Föhre, auch Föhrenberg bedeutet. Die Gottheit Fjörgyn ist diejenige, die sich als Elementargottheit auf den Föhrenbergen aufhält. Das aber ist urverwandt und man kann es noch nachfühlen in faírguni — mit dem lateinischen quercus — Eiche -, womit sie ebenfalls den Baum bezeichnet haben.
Nun möchte ich Sie darauf hinführen, wie in älteren Zeiten der Sprachbildung ein gewisser unterbewußter Zusammenhang herrscht zwischen dem Lautlichen und dem Sinn. Heute haben wir keine große Möglichkeit, mit unserem abstrakten Denken hinunterzugreifen auf das Lautliche. Wir fühlen das Lautliche gar nicht mehr; und Menschen, die viele Sprachen kennen, werden geradezu böse, wenn man ihnen zumutet, daß sie auf das Lautliche Rücksicht nehmen sollen. Die verschiedensten Worte haben natürlich die verschiedensten Übergänge, und es ist nur ein künstlicher Zusammenhang, den die lexikographische Übersetzung bietet; weil zuerst der Sprachgenius verfolgt werden muß, der eigentlich etwas anderes meint, als was unmittelbar wiedergegeben werden kann. Wir sagen im Deutschen Kopf = tête, testa im Romanischen. Warum sagen wir im Deutschen Kopf? Aus dem einfachen Grunde, weil wir im Deutschen einen plastischen Genius haben, weil wir das Runde bezeichnen wollen. Denn Kopf hängt mit kugelig zusammen, und wir sprechen im Grunde von demselben sprachbildenden Element her, wenn wir vom Kohlkopf sprechen und vom Menschenkopf. Kopf bezeichnet das Rundliche. Testa hängt aber zusammen mit der inneren Wesenheit des Menschen, mit dem Testieren, Bezeugen, Feststellen. So muß man Rücksicht nehmen, daß aus den verschiedenen Gesichtspunkten her die Dinge bezeichnet werden. Das fühlt man noch nach wenn man auch im einzelnen daneben sprechen kann -—, wenn man versucht, allmählich zurückzukommen zu älteren Gestalten, die sich innerhalb der Wortbildung vollziehen. Und man würde zuletzt zurückkommen zu jenem Stadium des sprachlichen Genius, wo er in der Lage ist, im Laute selber den Geist zu empfinden. Wo wird noch empfunden das Zusammengehören von meinen und Gemeinde? Man kann es heute schwer empfinden. Wenn man die Gemeinde etwa im Althochdeutschen aufsucht, gimeinida, und wenn man dann dazu eine weitergehende Metamorphose, mean im Englischen, nimmt, das damit verwandt ist, so kommt man auf ein solches Beispiel, bei dem in meinen gefühlt werden kann, wie es verwandt ist mit dem, was im Zusammenklang von mehreren gemeint wird und dadurch Kraft erhält, daß es mehrere sind. Und dieses Krafterhalten wird durch eine solche Vorsilbe \(gi\) ausgedrückt.
So muß man zurückgehen zu dem, was als das gefühlte Element im Sprachbilden drinnen ist. Wenn wir heute sagen taufen, das ein uraltes germanisches Wort ist, so fühlen wir nicht mehr recht, was das eigentlich für eine Bedeutung hat. Anschaulich wird es, wenn wir ins Altund Mittelhochdeutsche zurückgehen und da etwa toufan, toufen, töufen finden, und wenn wir dann finden, daß dieses towfan ebenso verwandt ist mit diups, wie es bei Ulfila noch in daupjan im Zusammenhang mit daupjands = der Täufer, vorhanden ist. Dann aber brauchen wir nur noch im Althochdeutschen das urverwandte Wort tiof aufzusuchen, was in unserer heutigen Sprache tief bedeutet, zum Beispiel vertiefen, tiefen - und wir haben damit verwandt taufen = hineintiefen, tauchen in das Wasser. Es ist einfach ein Hineintiefen in das Wasser.
Diese Dinge sollen uns nur dazu anleiten, in den sprachbildenden Genius hineinzuschauen. Von besonderer Wichtigkeit ist es, daß man die Bedeutungswandlungen verfolgt. Ein interessanter Bedeutungswandel ist zum Beispiel der folgende: gotisch hlaifs, althochdeutsch leiba, mittelhochdeutsch leip, heißt in der alten germanischen Sprache das Brot. Sehen Sie, Brot ist nicht geblieben als Bedeutung für hlaifs. Hlaifs ist Laib geworden, und es ist nur die Form geblieben, in der das Brot gegeben wird. Hat man früher hlaifs gesagt, so meinte man Brot; es hat sich gewandelt zur Form des Brotes. Man sieht diese UmwandJung noch, wenn man zum Beispiel die Metamorphose verfolgt im Altenglischen: blaford, was noch älter heißt hlafward oder hlafweard = derjenige, der das Brot wartet. Der hlaford war derjenige, zu dem man sich zu wenden hatte, um Brot zu bekommen, der des Brotes wartete, der das Recht hatte, den Acker zu bestellen, Brot zu machen und wiederum Brot abzugeben an diejenigen, die nicht freie Leute waren. Und durch allmähliche Umgestaltung - das h bedeutet ja nichts Besonderes — ist daraus das Wort Lord geworden. Lord ist der alte hlafward. Ebenso interessant ist das Gegenstück. Während aus hlaifs = Laib Brot wird, hat sich durch Metamorphose ein Wort gebildet, das im Altenglischen heißen würde: hlaefdige, wo das erste wiederum nichts anderes ist als der Laib Brot; dige ist umgewandelt von einer Tätigkeit. Wenn man Teig knetet, so tut man das, was im Worte dige liegt: digan, teigen, Teig kneten. Und wenn man zurückgeht auf den, der diese Tätigkeit ausübte, so kommt man zu der Frau des Lords. Während der Lord der Brotwart war, war seine Frau die Brotteigerin, Brotkneterin, die Brotgeberin. Und daraus ist später das Wort lady geworden. Lord und Lady hängen also in geheimnisvoller Weise zusammen mit dem Brotlaib. Man erkennt an diesen beiden Wörtern noch das, was von dem Brotgeber, Brotbereiter und der Brotkneterin, der Brotteigerin der alten Zeiten kommt.
So muß man versuchen, wirklich den Unterschied aufzufassen zwischen der abstrakten Art, wie wir heute zur Sprache stehen, und zwischen der konkreten, die vorhanden war, als man im Laute noch fühlte, was zu gleicher Zeit der Geist war, das Seelische, das man ausdrücken wollte.
Second lecture
Today, as I did before the first lecture, I would like to say a few words by way of introduction. I would ask you not to have too high expectations of the few hours I can devote to this subject here, at least not in terms of content. On the other hand, it will be meaningful to provide some inspiration on this matter. But given the improvised nature of how this came about, what is to be said here about language development can really be nothing more than a few improvised thoughts. And perhaps we will only receive a guideline from the manner in which I will conduct the discussions. I will not adhere to anything conventional, but will try to point out to you a number of things that will be important for an organic view of linguistic life.
In the first lecture, I pointed out how our German language in particular has undergone a development in which its vocabulary has, in a sense, been invaded. We have been able to point to one such significant invasion: that which came with the influx of Christianity into the Nordic cultures, with everything that followed in the wake of this influx of Christianity. Christianity did not just bring its content, but also brought this content in word images. And just as there was little, taken only externally, in the folk religions of the northern and central European population of what Christianity brought, so there was little possibility of understanding Christianity with the vocabulary of the people of northern and central Europe. Therefore, its bearers brought with them not only Christianity, but also Christian mental images and Christian sentiments and all the verbal trappings. We have listed a number of such things that were, so to speak, carried northward on the wings of Christianity. But then everything related to school also came with a current flowing from south to north. Words relating to schooling, such as Schule (school) and Tafel (blackboard) and so on – except for words such as Lesen (reading) or Buchstabe (letter) or Lehrer (teacher) – came up from the south, are actually of Romance-Latin origin, and have been incorporated into the German language organism in such a way that today people no longer consciously think about the fact that, basically, they have foreign words in the German language organism. I was then able to point out how, later on, from the 12th century onwards, a new invasion of many linguistic elements came from the west. And then I drew your attention to a Spanish wave and, finally, to what actually came in the 19th century: everything that immigrated from England.
From the examples I have given you — and these things will be elaborated on in more detail later — you can see for the time being that in those ancient times, when Christianity and many other things first made their appearance, the linguistic genius still had the opportunity to absorb and transform what had come in accordance with the inner feelings of the people. Admittedly, the peculiarity of this fact has not been pointed out by a specific word belonging to Christianity, but by the relationship between the, as one might think, ancient German word Schuster and sutor. It is one and the same word. There was simply so much language-forming power in the genius of German folklore that a word could be transformed in this way. Sutor belongs to the oldest invasion. The further one moves from this oldest invasion 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 Latin. And so it continues. With the later linguistic trends, it becomes apparent that the German language itself is increasingly incapable of transforming what is emerging. Let us keep that in mind. Whether, in the course of time, “five o'clock tea” will also be transformed, that is, whether the German linguistic genius will be able to develop something like a transformative power in a relatively long period of time, as it did in a shorter period of time in the past, remains to be seen, and is not significant for our purpose.
Finally, we want to ask ourselves what significance it has for the whole of national life that the inner language-forming power is declining, at least temporarily, and is therefore not as present today as it was in the past. This language-forming power is still present today to a greater extent the further one descends into the dialects. For example, one can ask about the origin of a highly peculiar word found in the Austrian dialect: pakschierli, or bakschierli. Austrians will probably be familiar with it. One can immediately sense what pakschierli is: a little girl who, when presented to strangers, prances around a bit, showing off all sorts of things that remain within the sphere of propriety — that is pakschierli. Or let's say, a little marzipan doll that doesn't exactly make you laugh, but causes that inner state of mind that can be characterized as: you're not laughing yet; if the impression in the same direction became stronger, you would have to laugh first. Such a marzipan doll would be pakschierli. What kind of word is that? It has no real connection to the rest of the dialect. It is nothing other than the transformed possierlich. This language-forming power can still be studied in dialects in a certain way; studying such things is also a good means of entering into the effective folk soul. And it could contribute enormously to understanding spiritual life if one could enter into the folk soul. Then we would return to what I pointed out in my book, The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Humanity, and which such minds as Professor Dessoir, whom you know well, made fun of. Through spiritual science, it can also be clearly understood what I have explained there: that the formation of consonants is connected with a reproduction of what becomes visible externally. What is expressed in consonants originally arises from the fact that, as human beings, we experience something similar to what is happening externally. To put it in popular terms, I could say: when you dig a stake into the ground, you can feel the digging of this stake by pushing down with your foot. This is the perception of your own act of will. Today, we no longer feel this act of will in the speech sound \(st.\) But in earlier times of language development, people felt in their own acts of will imitations of what was happening outside. And so the consonantal element became the imitation of what was happening outside, while the vocalic element is what expresses the inner self. \(A\) is astonishment, withdrawal in a certain sense. It is the relationship of the human being to the outside world that is expressed in the vowels. One must go back a long way if one wants to get to the bottom of these things; but one can get to the bottom of them, and then one comes to realize that those theories that are based purely on external hypotheses, such as the so-called “woof-woof” or “bim-bam” theory, are terrible aberrations. They are superficialities, whereas understanding human beings themselves can lead to an inner recognition of the connection between sound and what wants to come to light in the soul and spirit. Let us first consider this as a question that we will answer in the course of these lessons. In order to view the various chains of language elements in this light in the right way, we must gradually work our way up to what we actually want to understand, using individual examples that I will try to extract from language.
Today I would like to choose examples that can show you how language gradually progresses from the concrete to the abstract. Here, too, if we really have the good will to study the real, it sometimes helps us to turn to dialect. I will mention just one small example. When the Austrian farmer gets up in the morning, he talks about his night's sleep, but not in the same way that you probably talk about your night's sleep. You understand something very abstract by this, because you are educated, cultured people. The Austrian farmer is a man of nature: he sees spiritual and emotional elements in everything around him, and he was very aware of this. Nowadays, this awareness is fading, but in the 1970s and 1980s it was still very much present for someone like me who wanted to observe it. Because the farmer still sees elemental forces in everything, he never expresses himself in actual abstractions, 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, which he calls the night's sleep. This is the secret of language comprehension, which until recently still seemed alive: it does not prevent this concrete understanding from being connected with the spiritual. The Austrian farmer certainly thinks of an elemental being, but he expresses it through the act of having this secretion driven into his eyes. He would never understand the word in the abstract sense that the educated, cultured person understands it. Then the story begins to become somewhat abstract: if the farmer has attended school for a short time or has come into contact with the city, then something invisible and concrete is invoked by him, so to speak. He still says, “I wipe the sleep from my eyes,” but he makes more of a hand gesture to indicate that for him it is something very external, concrete, and real.
Now, the point is that such an observation leads us to look at how, in essence, abstract language always refers back to something more concrete. Take the following example. It has disappeared in our language, but in Scandinavian countries you can still find the expression barn for child. We no longer have this expression. What is the history of this expression? On the one hand, the expression takes us back to Gothic, where we find it in Ulfilas' translation of the Bible. It takes us back to the expression baíran = to carry. This in turn is related to both Greek and Latin. It is so closely related that the relationship can be clearly seen when applying the law of sound shift discovered by Jakob Grimm for the Germanic languages and their relationship to other languages. This law states that what is \(b\) in one language is \(f\) in another. I will highlight just one example. This brings us to the expression bairan in Greek, phero in Latin, and fero in Latin, both of which also have the meaning of carry, bring, bear, have. Baíran is only a transformation of fero, the word developing in a different direction. Now there is still Old High German beran. Gradually, what is verbal formation here disappears, and in German we no longer have a real opportunity to think back to the originally felt, sensed meaning. We look at the word barn = child; why? Because it is carried before it is born. It is the carried one, the child. So one points to its origin; one calls a child the carried one — baíran = fero. In the German language, we only have the word gebären (to give birth) in this composition. But we have something else; we have received as a remnant of all this the suffix that we have in fruchtbar (fertile), kostbar (precious), and so on. What does precious mean? That which bears the cost. What does fruitful mean? That which bears fruit. This was expressed very vividly, not in the abstract, as we have it today, but with concrete bearing in mind. This can be particularly vivid to you when you say: something becomes noticeable because it carries a smell to you. The smell is carried to you; this is how something becomes noticeable. In many ways, we would find the immediate vividness that is characteristic of the language-forming genius of very ancient times. I want to write down a line from Ulfilas' translation of the Bible: jah witands Jêsus thôs mitônins izê qath. That would be something like: 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 has already developed differently; there it is called mezzôn, and there is a related word, the word mezzan, which means to measure. Measuring, external measuring, visual measuring, has simply become thinking, felt internally. So an activity to be performed externally has provided the basis for the word “think.” I think actually means: I measure something spiritually. But this is related to the Latin meditor, which we still have in meditating, and in Greek medomai. If we go back to older forms of the German or Germanic linguistic genius, we find how this is still clearly present; but we must do this with inner understanding.
But what is interesting is the connection between this word and what it actually meant in the past. It has only become what it is today through a change in meaning, because it goes back to the not-so-distant past, to Hagestalt, and the word stalt is contained within Hagestalt. What is stalt? Stalt is someone who is placed somewhere. In medieval times, the older sons inherited the farm and the younger sons inherited the Hag. And the younger son, who therefore had fewer opportunities to marry than the older son, the younger son, who only inherited the Hag, an enclosed area, was left behind. Stalt is the owner. The owner of the enclosure is the Hagestalt. And when the awareness of this stalt was lost, the people only made his stalt too proud in the sound, so that the word stolz (proud) in this context cannot be compared to our pride at all, but is only a sound resemblance. But in forms of older language that have remained, one can still find the awareness of this stalt = to be placed. In one of the “Christmas plays,” one of the hosts has to say the words: I, as a host of my stalt, have power in my house and Losament. People think that this means the usual 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 status. The phrase “I have power in my house and in my domain” means that he attracts guests. Here you can still see the awareness of what is originally contained in the word “Hagestalt” (old maid). And so we can trace many extraordinary and subtle things in the genius of language when we consider the development of sound in this way.
When the disciples marveled at the healing that Christ Jesus performed on the man with gout, Ulfilas uses the word in his Bible translation that is related to silda-leik = strange-light. If we take the whole context in Ulfilas' translation where he uses this word, we would have to call what is being formed there something like the strangely formed. It is the physical that arouses amazement. This is expressed more objectively as silda-leik. We must feel in the word leik: the form, but as an image. When one spoke of form in the earlier sense, this was being placed. In earlier times, being placed was expressed in the word form. 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 corpse. Corpse, the image of what was there. It is very finely expressed when one still feels what lies in the corpse, how the corpse is the image of the human being, not the human being itself.
We learn, for example, from Ulfilas that the bride in Gothic is brütbs. And brüths, as it appears in Ulfilas' translation of the Bible, is closely related to Brut, to Brüten, so that when a marriage takes place, the Brut is simply determined by the bride. The bride is what determines the Brut when a marriage takes place. Yes, and what about the groom? Something is added to the bride. This would be Gothic guma, Old High German gomo, which arose through the sound shift of a word that appears in Latin as homo. In gam from groom, isguma = gomo = homo, is the man of the bride, the man who in turn provides for the establishment of the brood. The groom is therefore the bride's husband. You can see from this that we sometimes have to look to the unassuming syllables in order to truly pursue the language-forming genius of language.
Now, it is a curious thing that in Ulfilas, the word sa dumba = the dull one appears for the mute man whom Christ heals. And I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that Goethe still speaks of how he lived in a certain dullness in his youth. Dullness — not being able to see through one's surroundings completely — living in dullness, in fogginess; it prevents one from speaking, for example, it makes one mute. But at the same time, this word later became too stupid, so that this stupidity is nothing other than not being able to look around freely, being in the dull, in the foggy. It is very strange, my dear friends, how certain transformations, metamorphoses of the verbal can occur, and how these transformations, these metamorphoses show how the unconscious and the conscious interact in this strange being that can be called the genius of language, which expresses itself through the entirety of a people or tribe. For example, you have the Norse god's name Fjörgyn. This Norse god's name takes on a peculiar light when we find the word fairguni in Ulfilas's Gothic for mountain in the story where it is said that Christ went up the mountain with his disciples. We find this word, with a slightly shifted meaning, in the Old High German forha, which actually means pine tree or pine hill. The deity Fjörgyn is the one who dwells as an elemental deity on the pine mountains. But this is closely related and can still be felt in faírguni — with the Latin quercus — oak —, which they also used to refer to the tree.
Now I would like to show you how, in earlier times of language formation, there was a certain subconscious connection between sound and meaning. Today, we do not have much opportunity to access sound with our abstract thinking. We no longer feel the phonetic at all; and people who know many languages become downright angry when they are expected to take the phonetic into account. The most diverse words naturally have the most diverse transitions, and it is only an artificial connection that lexicographical translation offers; because first of all, the linguistic genius must be pursued, which actually means something other than what can be directly reproduced. In German, we say Kopf = tête, testa in Romance languages. Why do we say Kopf in German? For the simple reason that we have a plastic genius in German, because we want to describe something round. For Kopf is related to spherical, and we are basically speaking of the same language-forming element when we speak of a cabbage head and a human head. Kopf refers to something round. Testa, however, is connected with the inner essence of human beings, with testifying, attesting, ascertaining. So one must take into account that things are described from different points of view. One can still feel this even if one may speak incorrectly in individual cases — when one tries to gradually return to older forms that are taking place within word formation. And one would ultimately return to that stage of linguistic genius where one is able to perceive the spirit in the sound itself. Where is the connection between mine and community still felt? It is difficult to feel it today. If one looks up Gemeinde in Old High German, gimeinida, and then takes a further metamorphosis, mean in English, which is related to it, one comes to an example in which one can feel in my how it is related to what is meant in the harmony of several and gains strength from the fact that there are several. And this gaining of strength is expressed by a prefix such as \(gi\).
So we must go back to what is felt to be the element in language formation. When we say “baptize” today, which is an ancient Germanic word, we no longer really feel what it actually means. It becomes clear when we go back to Old and Middle High German and find toufan, toufen, töufen, and when we then find that this towfan is just as related to diups as it is still present in Ulfila in daupjan in connection with daupjands = the baptizer. But then we only need to look up the cognate word tiof in Old High German, which in our modern language means deep, for example, to deepen, to dive deep—and we have the related word taufen = to dive deep, to immerse in water. It is simply a matter of diving deep into the water.
These things should only guide us to look into the genius of language formation. It is particularly important to follow the changes in meaning. An interesting change in meaning is, for example, the following: Gothic hlaifs, Old High German leiba, Middle High German leip, means bread in the old Germanic language. You see, bread has not remained the meaning of hlaifs. Hlaifs has become loaf, and only the form in which bread is given has remained. In the past, when people said hlaifs, they meant bread; it has changed to the form of bread. You can still see this transformation if you follow the metamorphosis in Old English, for example: blaford, which is even older, means hlafward or hlafweard = the one who waits for bread. The hlaford was the one to whom one had to turn to get bread, the one who waited on the bread, who had the right to cultivate the land, make bread, and in turn give bread to those who were not free people. And through gradual transformation—the h does not mean anything special—it has become the word Lord. Lord is the old hlafward. The counterpart is just as interesting. While hlaifs = loaf of bread, metamorphosis has formed a word that in Old English would be hlaefdige, where the first part is again nothing other than the loaf of bread; dige is transformed from an activity. When you knead dough, you do what is contained in the word dige: digan, to knead, to knead dough. And if you go back to the person who performed this activity, you come to the lord's wife. While the lord was the bread keeper, his wife was the bread kneader, the bread giver. And this later became the word lady. Lord and lady are thus mysteriously connected to the loaf of bread. These two words still reveal what comes from the bread giver, bread maker, and bread kneader of olden times.
So we must try to really understand the difference between the abstract way we use language today and the concrete way it was used in the past, when the sound still conveyed what was at the same time the spirit, the soul, that one wanted to express.