drawing its nature, that is, the persistent nature of the being of language, from Saying? What if Saying, instead of merely impeding the destructiveness of information-language, had already overtaken it in virtue of the fact that Appropriation cannot be commandeered? What if Appropriation—no one knows when or how—were to become an insight whose illuminating lightening flash enters into what is and what is taken to be? What if Appropriation, by its entry, were to remove everything that is in present being from its subjection to a commandeering order and bring it back into its own?
All human language is appropriated in Saying and as such is in the strict sense of the word true language—though its nearness to Appropriation may vary by various standards. All true language, because assigned, sent, destined to man by the way-making movement of Saying, is in the nature of destiny. '/..
There is no such thing as a natural language that would be the language of a human nature occurring of itself, without a destiny. All language is historical, even where man does not know history in the modern European sense. Even language as information is not language per se, but historical in the sense and the limits of the present era, an era that begins nothing new but only carries the old, already outlined aspects of the modern age to their extreme.
The origin of the word—that is, of human speaking in terms of Saying—its origin which is in the nature of Appropriation, is what constitutes the peculiar character of language.
We recall at the end, as we did in the beginning, the words of Novalis: "The peculiar property of language, namely that language is concerned exclusively with itself—precisely that is known to no one." Novalis understands that peculiarity in the meaning of the particularity which distinguishes language. In the experience of the nature of language, whose showing resides in Appropriation, the peculiar property comes close to owning and appropriating. Here the peculiar property of language receives the original charter of its destined determination, something we cannot pursue here.
The peculiar property of language, which is determined by Appropriation, is even less knowable than the particularity of