{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 190/1919-03-28/p009","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"Wherein lies the cause? You realise that it lies not in the dead but in ourselves, in those, that is, who speak with the dead. And this is because since the middle of the fifteenth century, at any rate for all mid- and west-European languages—and the more is the farther west one goes—the living feeling for the picture expressed by the noun has been so lost that, when nouns are used, they sound nebulous, echoing only in the mind; indeed few people think of anything actual and real when using nouns. When obliged to turn nouns into verbs they are forced by an inner compulsion to think more concretely. To speak of a germ does not generally mean that a concrete conception of the germ of a plant, say a germinating bean, exists as an image in the mind, especially if the talk is abstract. A picture arises of something vague and nebulous, as it might in the case of some principle. When you say “what germinates” or “that which germinates,” because you have used the verbal form you are at least found to think of something growing, that is, something that moves; which means that you go from the abstract to the concrete. Then because you yourself go from the abstract to the concrete the dead begin to understand you. But, for reasons I have often explained here, because the living connection between those alive on the earth and those who have passed through the gate of death, the discarnate souls, must become increasingly closer, because impulses coming from the dead must work more and more effectively into the earth, then will of necessity take gradually into their language, into their speaking into their thinking something written over from the abstract to the concrete. It must again become an aim of mankind to think imaginatively, pictorially, when they speak.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"I. Inner Experience of Language I","site_heading":null,"date":"1919-03-28","location":null,"word_count":310,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/190/1919-03-28/p009","alignment_confidence":"high","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"not_established","translator":null,"identified_edition":"LRZ1969","book_title":"The Social Question as a Problem of Soul Life","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA190/English/LRZ1969/19190328p01.html","evidence":null,"reason":"no_translator_named","note":"Neither the lecture's own page nor rsarchive's lecture list names a translator for it. No translator is established for this lecture: nothing at the level of the lecture names one. Do not attribute this English to a translator, and do not borrow a credit from another lecture of the volume. Cite the German for anything load-bearing."},"edition_coverage":{"de":["original"],"en":["English"]},"available_versions":[{"lang":"de","edition":"original","edition_basis":null,"is_original":true,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/190/1919-03-28/p009"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/190/1919-03-28/p009","paragraph_aligned":true}],"record":{"record_type":"unknown","scope":"volume","note":"How this text was taken down (shorthand transcript, listeners' notes or manuscript) is not on record here. Unknown is not an assurance of a stenogram: check the edition's own notes before resting an argument on one word.","evidence":null,"evidence_translation":null,"evidence_source":null},"german_anchor":{"de_prefix":"1919-03-28","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 190/1919-03-28/p008","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/190/1919-03-28/p008"}],"bead_confidence":"high","length_check":{"de_words":332,"en_words":310,"ratio":0.93,"partial":false},"correspondence":"established","note":"English passage numbering is edition-relative, so the same number need not name the same paragraph in the German. The German original passage(s) above are the edition-invariant anchor — fetch them (lang='de') to verify wording before quoting across editions."},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":0.99,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":5677,"original_word_count":5725,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"not_established","translator":null,"identified_edition":"LRZ1969","book_title":"The Social Question as a Problem of Soul Life","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA190/English/LRZ1969/19190328p01.html","evidence":null,"reason":"no_translator_named","note":"Neither the lecture's own page nor rsarchive's lecture list names a translator for it. No translator is established for this lecture: nothing at the level of the lecture names one. Do not attribute this English to a translator, and do not borrow a credit from another lecture of the volume. Cite the German for anything load-bearing.","warning":"No translator is recorded for this edition. An unattributed translation cannot be weighed as a witness: you cannot tell which hand made the choices in it. Cite the German for anything load-bearing."},"entity_parity":{"status":"ok","checked_against":["GA 190/1919-03-28/p008"],"missing_from_translation":[],"present_only_in_translation":[],"bead_confidence":"high","note":"Every load-bearing name in the German counterpart appears in this English passage. That is a check on NAMES only: a translation can keep every name and still reverse who acts on whom, change a number, or soften a claim. Read the German for anything you intend to rest an argument on."},"note":"quote_safe certifies the bytes of this text. This block is about the translation as a WITNESS: who made it, and whether it carries the same names as the original. See witness_completeness for how much of the original this witness holds."}}