Well, the trick would be a lot more tricky and useful if some genius converted the various [[German language]] links to [[German (language)]] so we wouldn't have to type [[German language|German]] all the time. (And [[Spanish language]] and [[Latin language]] etc.)
Yup, this is a general principle we should apply. See my message from a couple of weeks ago:
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-February/000978.html
Regards,
Erik