Wittgensein ends his tractatus with the sentence: "7 What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence." http://www.voidspace.org.uk/psychology/wittgenstein/tractatus.shtml

What does this sentence mean? How can we pass over in silence? and is it possible? Is there anything beyond one could say?

Interesting line of discussion, the above line is obviously what most people do (on the whole) most of the time, at least in regerds to other people generally and situations they feel uncomfortable/threatened over. I guess the exception (or at least should be) is in personal relationships, yet it still happens all the time. Though just because something is not spoken about physically, doesn't mean that it's not spoken about via other means... Internal conversations, or through body language and subtle hints, eye contact (eyes speak truth) and tone of voice.

What I also find interesting is, that this line ("What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence." ) is translated into German as "Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.", which means what one can not speak about, one has to keep silence. The "..pass over in silence" however implies that ther might be a (silent) possibility, while "to keep silence" denies that possibility.

Is this just a slight mistake or is it impossoble to translate a text completely into another language, without loosing (some) meaning, I wonder?

P.S. I just found another text on the internet where is says: " 7 Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." (http://www.kfs.org/~jonathan/witt/tlph.html)    Funny !!

I don't think it's possible to exactly translate word for word and keep exact meaning. People try do write different translations of books, and sometimes I think it's a bit like interpretation of morals, philosophy or art. It all depends how that person takes it, depending on their life experiences and everything that has made them who they are. Obviously we can get a jist of something and even get most of it close, but I doubt it could ever be totally right, as every language has different understandings and rules. (I'm currently learning Spanish and it's quite interesting to see the little differences)

I don't think we CAN 'keep silence'... At least not internally, it's nature, it's what we do. Even monks can't properly master it.

 Do you have a brother ?...

Have you noticed what he says is more clear to you than it is to others ?

It is because we kind of know our brother's thought proccess,and his reasoning methods and how he may have come up with his findings.......in fact his body langauge is also known to us..etc,etc.....

Like wise, people can express many things ,even by non-logical statements...even by redundancies......and listeners knowlledge of the speaker or the issues..and even human psycology may make a huge difference ....as the listener may draw far more than what is said.

Reducing Human Language to mathematical statements...or even bionary forms...may be simpler...but it reduced human element and intutions,and discounts the importantce of " The listeners ". 

I would like to read another inerestin paragraph from Tractatus: Here Wittgenstein writes about truth and reality and the fact that a false proposition also describes a meaning that was or lies in the sentence.

"...4.05 Reality is compared with propositions.

4.06 A proposition can be true or false only in virtue of being a picture of reality.

4.061 It must not be overlooked that a proposition has a sense that is independent of the facts: otherwise one can easily suppose that true and false are relations of equal status between signs and what they signify. In that case one could say, for example, that 'p' signified in the true way what 'Pp' signified in the false way, etc.

4.062 Can we not make ourselves understood with false propositions just as we have done up till now with true ones?--So long as it is known that they are meant to be false.--No! For a proposition is true if we use it to say that things stand in a certain way, and they do; and if by 'p' we mean Pp and things stand as we mean that they do, then, construed in the new way, 'p' is true and not false.

4.0621 But it is important that the signs 'p' and 'Pp' can say the same thing. For it shows that nothing in reality corresponds to the sign 'P'. The occurrence of negation in a proposition is not enough to characterize its sense (PPp = p). The propositions 'p' and 'Pp' have opposite sense, but there corresponds to them one and the same reality.

4.063 An analogy to illustrate the concept of truth: imagine a black spot on white paper: you can describe the shape of the spot by saying, for each point on the sheet, whether it is black or white. To the fact that a point is black there corresponds a positive fact, and to the fact that a point is white (not black), a negative fact. If I designate a point on the sheet (a truth-value according to Frege), then this corresponds to the supposition that is put forward for judgement, etc. etc. But in order to be able to say that a point is black or white, I must first know when a point is called black, and when white: in order to be able to say,'"p" is true (or false)', I must have determined in what circumstances I call 'p' true, and in so doing I determine the sense of the proposition. Now the point where the simile breaks down is this: we can indicate a point on the paper even if we do not know what black and white are, but if a proposition has no sense, nothing corresponds to it, since it does not designate a thing (a truth-value) which might have properties called 'false' or 'true'. The verb of a proposition is not 'is true' or 'is false', as Frege thought: rather, that which 'is true' must already contain the verb.

4.064 Every proposition must already have a sense: it cannot be given a sense by affirmation. Indeed its sense is just what is affirmed. And the same applies to negation, etc.

4.0641 One could say that negation must be related to the logical place determined by the negated proposition. The negating proposition determines a logical place different from that of the negated proposition. The negating proposition determines a logical place with the help of the logical place of the negated proposition. For it describes it as lying outside the latter's logical place. The negated proposition can be negated again, and this in itself shows that what is negated is already a proposition, and not merely something that is prelimary to a proposition. "

What you say is very true. Non verbal signals acompany every word we say. Watzlawick called it: "one can not not comunicate." Even in sms or email we interprete, read between the lines, look for what was not sayed, but meant...