Bilingual toponyms as the substance of intercultural linguistics: German-Slovenian language pair example

Abstract

This paper deals with bilingual toponyms in the German and the Slovene language. The languages in question are still considered being in contact. According to toponymic equivalence, endonymy and exonomy, it will be pointed out, that there are intensive interlingual processes going on, in the field, which is closely connected with historical, political, economical and cultural developments in the central European area. In the paper, sociolinguistic questions will be discussed: Through a direct and indirect inquiry of a group of informants it will be shown, that bilingual toponyms represent an essential element of intercultural competence, and, from a linguistic perspective, reflect interculturality, and therefore should be systematically classified and described.