 There are some critical distinctions that Humboldt employs in his linguistic writings, which shed light on his understanding of language and the approach he follows in his empirical investigations. Most famous (and often misunderstood) is his distinction between language perceived as product (Werk) or ergon on the one hand and as activity (Tätigkeit) or energeia on the other (Humboldt 1836: LVII). It is not identical with the distinction introduced by Saussure between langue and parole, since Humboldt’s distinction cuts across both langue and parole and both can be seen from the angle of either process or product. Because Humboldt perceived language not as a fixed entity or object, but as something transitory, something that is real only in the moment of speaking, as an activity, he thought “its true definition can only be a genetic one” (Humboldt 1836: LVVII). Thus he distinguished sharply (as did his contemporary Schleiermacher) before Saussure and twentieth-century linguistics, between language (Sprache) and Speech (Rede). In his French Essai of 1811 he also uses Saussure’s third term, langage in a similar manner as pertaining to language in a general sense. 