This volume consists of six essays on interrelated themes, focusing on key aspects of language reflection during the period 1500-1800, with particular emphasis on the seventeenth century. German speakers are seen attempting to discover and define the nature of adjacent languages, whilst also shaping and demarcating the identity and image of their native tongue.The first essay outlines and illustrates what European linguists believed, in an age before the advent of comparative philology, about the historical-genetic position of German within the circle of Classical and modern European lan