German and English - Grammatical considerations of Precision, Sense, Nonsense, Intent, the "Order of Concrete Things," and the Philosophical Criterion of Use

"The English language lacks the ability to express thoughts that surpass the order of concrete things. It’s because the German language has this ability that Germany is the country of thinkers."

 7 March 1942, quoted in Hitler's Table Talk, 1941–1944

  Source: 1942, Sixth entry

Sorry for the lurid opening, but it raises interesting questions, ranging from the philosophy of language to political philosophy.

I gather conversations about Hitler are rather more "clinical" in America than elsewhere. That's not to say I am not insensitive to the ruffled feathers that could emerge in opening this post as I have. By way of comparison, I was "mildly" alarmed in grad school in the early 1990s where my professors were "casually" discussing Heidegger. They sought to bring his ideas to bear in their ill-advised armchair scheme to build a Utopia--or anyway a Utopia such as specialists in Literary Theory and Comparative Literature might conceive it. Shades of Gulliver's Travels, Book III.

My uncle, a Hittitologist and professor of ancient history who knew 20 (or more) languages, and who was so fluent in German that Germans would ask him when he had come over from Germany, said English was more precise, but I don't recall him offering any reasons.

The father of a friend of mine, who came to America from Germany as a POW in 1945, and who was an engineer, thought that German offered more precision than English. His German and his English were excellent (and we were in perfect agreement when it came to the importance of studying grammar). Meanwhile, having only a vague (and now lost) reading knowledge of German, I was unable to debate the subject with him, though my sense was (and still is) that English is capable of greater flexibility and precision.

First, if English can't produce a word that puts the finger right down on "it," then English generates (or finds) a new word that puts the finger on it with perfect precision, as the word is exactly the thing. Second, and following after something Anthony Burgess said, "English is a language without a grammar," and (again following Burgess) in English we simply group the words together in such a way that their proximity to one another in a sentence patterns the proximity of the various elements we are describing (or arguing about) as they appear in the real world; so to speak, word placement and proximity follow the case of the real thing (or things) that we are discussing.

In good English, there can be no "thoughts that surpass the order of concrete things" because language that surpasses the order of concrete things is metaphysics, and hence nonsense. And hence, also, our on-going highbrow discussion of Wittgenstein's remarks as they relate to such questions. And hence, too, the place of Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" in the supporting and adjunct curricula. 

It might be argued that no word ever puts a finger on anything. Furthermore, it is the intent of the people using the words that counts. Thus philosophical (or interlocutory) problems are not with the languages themselves, but the people using them.

But I can only agree with this in a Pickwickian sense, as I am reserved about the use of the word "intent" (see, for example, Wimsatt and Beardsley on "The Intentional Fallacy").

Rather than "intent", I suspect such words as "use", "understanding", "confusion", "agreement", "alternative", and "context" come closer to the concepts we want to use here, especially in our quest to dispel linguistic mystification, clear off conceptual confusion, and put our finger right down on something. 

Consider:

                           Two      Chicks

I submit the finger has been perfectly placed. And in both instances!

But I fear I have let the thesis slip through my fingers. Let's get back to it.

Unfortunately, my uncle has passed away, and also my friend's father is gone. No doubt, with either of the two men, unpacking this debate would be fascinating. As I recall these two figures--pondering their life experiences, their knowledge, their expertise, and the time I spent with them--our conversations were always stimulating, candid, instructive, and generous. Curious how I took these friendships for granted. Alas, I have lost both. Look around you for such people.

Meanwhile, I will seek elsewhere for instruction in this matter.

For now, a visit with Mark Twain's The Awful German Language should provide some insights.