The Grammarian and his Language

"But it is not absurd to say that there is nothing in the formal pecularities of Hottentot or of Eskimo which would obscure the clarity or hide the depth of Kant’s thought – indeed, it may be suspected that the highly synthetic and periodic structure of Eskimo would more easily bear the weight of Kant’s terminology than his native German"

Nous traduisons :
" Mais il n’est pas absurde de dire qu’il n’y a rien dans les particularités formelles de l’hottentot ou de l’eskimo qui pourrait obscurcir la clarté ou cacher la profondeur de la pensée de Kant – en fait, on pourra suspecter que la structure hautement synthétique et périodique de l’eskimo porterait plus facilement le poids de la terminologie de Kant que son allemand natif. "

Edward Sapir, " The grammarian and his language ", in American Mercury, I, 1924. Repris dans le volume Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language Culture Personality, edited by David G. Mandelbaum, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963, p. 153.