Teaching Language arTs in The WaLdorf schooL

Reading
183
Here we have a significant and important phenomenon. If you
look at language, not just from an external or utilitarian perspective
(since language today has become primarily a way of transmitting
thoughts or messages, and words are hardly more than symbols of
outer things), and if you return to the soul element living in the
word—living in language as a whole —you will find the way back
to the true nature of the so-called sound; every sound with a quality
of the consonant has an entirely different character from a vowel
sound. [In several European languages the vowel sound added to a
consonantal letter is pronounced either before or after the consonant
(that is, em, but dee). It is conceivable that here the stenographer may
have omitted the word “often,” and the text may have read “In Middle
Europe today we often make the sound of a letter by proceeding from
the vowel to the consonant. . . .” — Trans.]
As you know, there are many different theories explaining the
origin of language. (This is a situation similar to photographs taken
from different angles.) Among others, there is the so-called Bow-
Wow Theory, which represents the view that words imitate sounds
that come from different beings or objects. According to this theory,
when people first began to speak, they imitated characteristic external
sounds. For example, they heard a dog barking, “bow-wow.” If
they wanted to express a similar soul mood they produced a similar
sound. No one can refute such an idea. On the contrary, there are
many valid reasons to support the Bow-Wow Theory. As long as one
argues only from this particular premise, it is indisputable. But life
does not consist of proofs and refutations; life is full of living movement,
transformation, living metamorphosis. What is correct in one
particular situation can be wrong in another, and vice versa. Life has
to be comprehended in all its mobility.
As you may know, there is another theory, called the Ding-Dong
Theory, whose adherents strongly oppose the bow-wow theory. According
to this second theory, the origin of language is explained in
the following way: When a bell is struck, the ensuing sound is caused
by the specific constitution of its metal. A similar mutual relationship
between object and sound is also ascribed to human speech. The
Ding-Dong Theory represents more of a feeling into the materiality