Consider now the following example, which is of great help in all these considerations: In order to see what happens when one understands a word, we play this game: You have a list of words, partly these words are words of my native language, partly words of foreign languages more or less familiar to me, partly words of languages entirely unknown to me, (or, which comes to the same, nonsensical words invented for the◇◇◇ occasion.) Some of the words of my native tongue, again, are words of ordinary, everyday usage; and some of these, like “house”, “table”, “man”, are what we might call primitive words, being among the first words a child learns, and some of these again, words of baby talk like “Mamma”, “Papa”. Again there are more or less common technical terms such as “carburetor”, “dynamo”, “fuse”; etc. etc. All these words are read out to me, and after each one I have to say “Yes” or “No” according to whether I understand the word or

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not. I then try to remember what happened in my mind when I understood the words I did understand, and when I didn't understand the others. And here again it will be useful ˇto consider the particular tone of voi[v|c]e and facial expression with which I say “Yes” and “No”, alongside of the so-called mental events. ‒ ‒ Now it may surprise us to find that although this experiment will shew us a multitude of different characteristic experiences, it will not shew us any one experience which we should be inclined to call the experience of understanding. There will be such experiences as these: I hear the word “tree” and say “Yes” with the tone of voi[v|c]e and sensation of “Of course”. Or I hear “corrobo◇ration” – – I say to myself, “Let me see”, vaguely remember a case of help[u|i]ng, and say “Yes”. I hear “gadget”, I imagine the man who always used this word, and say “Yes”. I hear “Mamma”, this strikes me as funny and childish, – – “Yes”. A foreign word I shall very often translate in my mind into English before answering. I hear “spintheriscope”, and say to myself, “Must be some sort of scientific instrument”, perhaps try to think up its meaning from its derivation and fail, and say “No”. In another case I might say to myself, “Sounds like Chinese” – – “No”. Etc. There will on the other hand be a large class of cases in which I am not aware of anything happening except hearing the word and saying the answer. And there will also be cases in which I remember experiences (sensations, thoughts), which, as I should say, had nothing to do with the word at all. Thus amongst the experiences which I can describe there will be a class which I might call typical experiences of understanding and some typi[v|c]al experiences of

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not understanding. But opposed to these there will be a large class of cases in which I should have to say, “I know of no particular experience at all, I just said ‘Yes’, or ‘No’.”

(2015–) Wittgenstein Source Bergen Nachlass Edition (WS-BNE). Edited by the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen under the direction of Alois Pichler. In: Wittgenstein Source, curated by Alois Pichler (2009–) and Joseph Wang-Kathrein (2020–). (N) Bergen: WAB.