Nationalism and Culture (50 page)

The development of militarism and army organization brought a whole flood of new words from France, which the French in their turn had borrowed from the Italians. Most of these words have retained their

foreign imprint completely. Think of Armee^ Marine^ Artillerie, In-fanteriey Kavallerie, Regiment^ Kompanie, Schvoadron^ Bataillon, Major, General, Leutnant, Sergeant, Munition, Patrone, Bajonett, Bom-be, Granate, Schrapnell, Kaserne, Baracke, equipieren, exerzieren, jiisilieren, chargieren, rekrutieren, kommandieren, and countless other words from military life.

The introduction of new foods and drinks has enriched our language with a long line of totally foreign expressions. There are Kaffee and Zucker from the Arabic, Tee from the Chinese, Tahak from the Indian, Sago from the Malayan, Reis from the Latin-Greek, Kakao from the Mexican. We will not speak of the new words with which science daily endows the language, nor of the countless coined words which the language of art contains. Their number is quite beyond reckoning. Today sport, which is spreading in Germany quite uncannily, has adorned the language with many English and American technical expressions that hardly enhance its beauty. Even when one tries hard to eliminate these foreign words and replace them by German expressions quite monstrous results sometimes follow.

But we are dealing not alone with so-called loan-words taken from a foreign language and in some form transferred to our own. There is another phenomenon in the development of every language for which the term loan-translation has been coined. When a hitherto unknown idea from another cultural circle penetrates into our mental or social life it does not always happen that, together with the new idea, we accept a foreign expression into our language. It frequently occurs that we translate the newly acquired concept into our own language by creating from the material at hand a word structure not previously used. Here the stranger confronts us, so to speak, in the mask of our own language. In this manner came words like Halbwelt, from demi-monde; Aussperrung, from lockout; Halbinsel, from peninsula; Zwieback, from biscuit; Wolkenkratzer, from skyscraper, and a hundred similar creations. In his Critique of Language, Mauthner mentions a number of these "bastard translations," as he calls them; words like Ausdruck (expression), Bischen (particle), Rucksicht (regard), and Wohltat (beneficence). Of such loan translations there are a great number in every language. These have an actually revolutionary effect on the course of development of the language, and show us most of all the unreality of the view which maintains that in every language the spirit of a particular people lives and works. In reality every loan-translation is but a proof of the continuous penetration of foreign cultural elements within our own cultural circle—in so far as a people can speak of "its own culture."

Let us take into account how strongly the oriental imagery of the Old and New Testament has affected the heritage of all European Ian-

guages. We are thinking not only of short phrases like "mark of Cain," "judgment of Solomon," "Job's comforter," "to bear one's cross," and so on, which are quite colloquial j more involved figures from the Bible have penetrated into all languages so deeply that they have become fully naturalized in everyday speech. Here are some examples which could easily be multiplied many times: to sell one's birthright for a mess of pottage j for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle j to gird up one's loins J a wolf in sheep's clothing j heaping coals of fire on one's headj to drive out the Devil with Beelzebubj to put new wine into old bottlesj to hide one's light under a bushelj not worthy to tie the shoe-laces of another j being wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove; straining at a gnat and swallowing a camelj a voice crying in the wilderness; poor as Job; a light dawning on us; to speak with fiery tongues; to be like unto whited sepulchers; to wash one's hands of guilt; and a whole line of others of the kind.

In fact, loan-translation is one of the most curious things in language. Who thinks deeper here will reach conclusions which completely dispel the fairy tale of the immaculate conception of national speech. Loan-translations testify eloquently how strongly culture unites mankind. This bond is so enduring because it has, so to speak, tied itself and has not been imposed on man by external pressure. Compared with culture, so-called "national consciousness" is but an artificial creation serving to justify the political ambitions of small minorities in society.

Culture knows no such subterfuge, if only for the reason that it was not mechanically made, but has grown organically. It is the sum total of all human activity and motivates our lives unconditionally and without pretense. Loan-translations are nothing but intellectual borrowings by various groups of people within a certain cultural circle—and even beyond it. This influence, the so-called "national consciousness" opposes vainly, and Fritz Mauthner remarks with good reason:

Before the intrusion of national consciousness, before the beginning of purist movements, the mass of the people borrowed from the treasury of foreign speech. Afterwards, such loans were avoided, but all the more numerously foreign concepts were brought into the language by translation. There are modern people of such touchy national feeling that they have driven purism to the utmost extreme (Neo-Greeks and Czechs). But they can isolate only their language, not their world concepts, their whole intellectual situation."

For speech is not a special organism obeying its own laws, as was formerly believed; it is the form of expression of human individuals socially united. It changes with the spiritual and social conditions of life

'-' Fritz Mauthner, Die Sprac/ie, Frankfurt a/M 1906, p. 55.

and is in the highest degree dependent on them. In speech, human thought expresses itself, but this is no purely personal affair, as is often assumed, but an inner process continually animated and influenced by the social environment. In man's thoughts are mirrored not only his natural environment, but all relations which he has with his fellows. The closer the union to which we belong, the richer and more varied the cultural relations we maintain with our fellow men, the stronger are the reciprocal effects which unite us with our social environment and continually influence our thought.

Thinking is, therefore, by no means.a process which finds its explanation solely in the mental life of the individual; it is likewise a reflection of the natural and social environment which crystallizes in man's brain into definite concepts. From this point of view the social character of human thought is undeniable; and as speech is but the living expression of our thought, its existence is rooted in the life of society and conditioned by it.

This is, indeed, apparent from the fact that human speech is not inborn, but only acquired by man through his social relations. It is not maintained that by this concept all the riddles of thought and speech have been solved. In this field there is very much for which we have no sufficient explanation; and the well-known opinion of Goethe, that really "no one understands another, and no one on hearing the same words thinks what another thinks," has certainly profound meaning. There are still many unknown and mysterious things in us and around us concerning which the last word has not yet been spoken. However, we are not dealing here with such problems, but solely with the social character of thought and speech, which in our opinion is undeniable.

Concerning the origin of language, likewise, we have until now only been able to surmise, but Haeckel's assumption that man commenced his evolutionary course as a mute being appears to us to have little probability. It is reasonable to assume that man, who had inherited the social instincts of his predecessors in the animal kingdom, was already, upon his appearance on the human plane of life, endowed with certain expressions of speech—however crude and undeveloped these might have been. For language in its widest sense is not the exclusive property of man, but can be clearly recognized in all social species. That within these species a certain mutual understanding takes place is undeniable according to all observations. It is not language as such, but the special forms of human speech, the articulate language which permits of concepts and so enables man's thoughts to achieve higher results, which distinguish man in this respect from other species.

It is probable that human speech was at its beginning limited to certain sounds derived from nature, to which were probably added expressions denoting pain, pleasure or surprise. These sounds became habitual within

the horde for the designation of certain things and were inherited by the progeny. With these first paltry beginnings the necessary preconditions for the further development of speech were given. But speech itself became for man a valuable instrument in the struggle for existence and has doubtless contributed most to his fabulous rise.

By communal work, obligatory for the whole horde, there gradually arose also a series of special designations for the tools and objects of daily use. Every new invention, every discovery, contributed to the enrichment of the previously acquired store of language, and this evolution in time led to the formation of definite word pictures or symbols from which a new mode of thinking had to result. Although language was primarily only an expression of thought, it now reacted on thought and influenced its course. The image import of words, which originally sprang from purely sensual impressions, gradually progressed to the mental and created thereby the first precondition for abstract thinking. From this arose that curious reciprocal action between speech and human thought, which during cultural development has become ever more varied and complicated, so that we can with some reason maintain that "language thinks for us."

But it is these very image-expressions, the so

The German philologist, Ernst Wasserzieher, in some excellent studies

from which the above examples were taken, has described impressively the symbolism of language and has shown that we speak almost exclusively in images without noticing it.^ When peasant women lesen (glean) ears of grain in a field, when we iibertreten (overstep) a puddle, when our image mirrors in a brook, these are real processes which need no further explanation. But when we lesen from a newspaper, iibertreten the law, or a man's soul is mirrored in his eyes, then the symbolism of language is at work, visualizing for us certain processes for which sensual perception can only serve as godfather.

These conceptual images are not only subject to constant change, but every new phenomenon of social life creates new word-forms which were quite incomprehensible to former generations because they lacked the social and mental bases for these new structures in language. The World War, with its immediate accompanying effects in all fields of economic, political and social life, gives an excellent example of this. During it a number of new words were introduced into the language which no one would have understood before the War, for example: drumfire, gas attack, flamethrower, fieldwalker, shock troop, smoke screen, barrage fire, camouflage. Such new formations appear in the course of time in all fields of human activity, and owe their creation to the constant change in the conditions of life. In this manner language changes within certain periods so completely that later generations, looking backward and viewing its creation, find it stranger and stranger, until finally a point is reached where it is no longer understood and has meaning only for the scholar engaged in research.

Already the language of Schiller and Goethe has disappeared. The speech of Fischart, Hans Sachs and Luther presents many problems to us, and frequently requires an explanation to bring the men of that time and their concept of life within our comprehension. The further we hark back—say to the time of Walter von der Vogelweide and Gottfried von Strassburg—the darker and less understandable becomes the meaning of the language, until we finally reach a point where "our own language" appears to us like a foreign tongue whose puzzles we can only solve by the aid of translations. Let one read a few stanzas from the famous Heilandhandschrijt^ allegedly composed by an unknown Saxon poet at the instigation of Louis the Pious not long after the conversion of the Saxons to Christianity. This German from the first half of the ninth century sounds to us today like a foreign languagej and just as strange to us are the men who spoke it.

The language of Rabelais was hardly understood in France a hundred years after his death. The modern Frenchman can understand the original text of the great Humanist only with the aid of a special dictionary.