ABSTRACT
Speculation concerning the connection between language, identity and character became Europe-wide as a result of the increase in comparative etymological and philological studies, and of philosophies of language which coincided with the emergence of national self-consciousness. 'Just as it is true for each individual' wrote the Greek Adamantios Korais, that "a man's character is known by his speech", so, in the same way, the character of an entire nation is known by its language'. Korais, noted for his editions of ancient Greek authors, suggested that individual diversity of character was not only personal but linguistic. This true character could only be revealed 'when a person writes in his natural language - that is, in the language which he suckled with his mother's milk and which he speaks every day.' For clarity of thought and for its transparent communication we must write and think in that same language: 'If we wish to bring order to the conceptions of our mind and to render the language able to express those conceptions, we have a great obligation to write in the language in which we think.' Furthermore, every nation has a right to its own language: 'No-one has the right to say to a nation, "I want you to speak like this, to write like this". .. Only time has the power to alter the dialects of nations, just as it alters nations themselves' (qtd. Jeffreys, 1985, 51). German thought was by no means the only source of such views: the British writer, James Harris, in Hermes (1751), had argued, for example, that 'Nations, like single Men, have their peculiar Ideas,. . . these peculiar Ideas become THE GENIUS OF THEIR LANGUAGE . . . the wisest Nations, having the most and best Ideas, will consequently have the best and most copious languages'* (1751:1771 edn., 407-8).
