that human beings—the ones who speak, and that means, the ones who say—go to encounter the saying; indeed, encounter it on the basis of what is proper to it. The latter is the sounding of the word. When mortals say, and thus encounter, they respond. Every spoken word is already a response—a reply, a saying that goes to encounter, and listens. The remanding of mortals to the saying releases the essence of man to that usage by which man is needed—needed in order to bring the soundless saying into the resonance of language.
In the remanding to usage, propriation lets the saying arrive at speech. The way to language pertains to the saying that is determined by propriation. On this way, which pertains to the essence of language, what is peculiar to language conceals itself. The way is propriating.
To clear a way—for instance, across a snowfield—is still today in the Alemannic-Swabian dialect called wegen [literally, "waying"]. This transitive verb suggests creating a way, giving shape to it and keeping it in shape. Be-wegen (Be-wegung) [cf. bewegen, Bewegung, to move, motion], thought in this way, no longer means merely transporting something on a way that is already at hand; rather, it means rendering the way to . . . in the first place, thus being the way.
Propriation propriates human beings for itself, propriates them into usage. Propriating showing as owning, propriation is thus the saying's way-making movement toward language.
Such way-making brings language (the essence of language) as language (the saying) to language (to the resounding word). Our talk concerning the way to language no longer means exclusively or even preeminently the course of our thought on the trail of language. While under way, the way to language has transformed itself. It has transposed itself from being some deed of ours to the propriated essence of language. Except that the transformation of the way to language looks like a transposition that has just now been effected only for us, only with respect to us. In truth, the way to language has its sole place always already in the essence of language itself. However, this suggests at the same time that the way to language