Slavistik vs. Slawistik (was: Slavic vs. Slavonic)

[Bjoern Wiemer]

Whoever answered my letter thank you. But I don't understand by a
"functionalized distinction" between 'SlaVistik' and 'SlaWistik'. There are,
to my knowledge, no differences on the content level of the way you spell
the word in German. It is rather a matter of tradition and, consequently,
lazyness. I am from the Western part of Germany and would write only
SlaVistik (as you say); but this use is also strengthened by the fact that
when translitering Cyrillic characters into Latin ones, V is used, not W.

>In the German-speaking world, there is an (albeit orthographic) distinction
>between _Slawistik_ (roughly speaking, in Austria and East Germany) and
>_Slavistik_ (used elsewhere).  Predictably, this distinction has become
>functionalized.  With German unification, some places, such as my own
>current affiliation (for two more days) in the former East Germany, use
>_Slavistik_; I've heard of some places where the institute's name is
>spelled one way while the name of a publication there is spelled the other
>way.
>


With kind regards,
Bjoern Wiemer.



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Bjoern Wiemer
Universitaet Konstanz
Philosophische Fakultaet / FG Sprachwissenschaft - Slavistik
Postfach 55 60 - D 179
D- 78457 Konstanz

e-mail: Bjoern.Wiemer at uni-konstanz.de
tel.: 07531 / 88- 2582
fax:  07531 / 88- 4007
                - 2741

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