From an epistemological perspective, Wilhelm von Humboldt's studies on the Oriental and East Asian languages and writing systems (Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sanskrit, Chinese, Polynesian) raise the question of his position in the Orientalist discourse of his time. Said [Said, E.W., 1978. "Orientalism. Western Conceptions of the Orient, fourth…

The authority of the monolingual native speaker, unchallenged until now, has been questioned recently because of postmodern and postcolonialist trends. It is now valid to view learners of German as border-crossers between cultures, as bilingual/bicultural individuals. Ownership of the German language is neither a birthright nor an acquired right,…

We humans do have a gift for bringing friendliness to this world, and this ability directly challenges the lines that Brecht wrote in which "the friendliness in this world" amounts to little more than "two handfuls of earth." With examples and thoughts from linguistics, cultural anthropology, and literature, readers are invited to reflect on how…