Hi, English isn’t my mother tongue so I was asking myself that question since I first encounted a w/… Back then I was like: “What tf does ‘w slash’ stand for?” And when I found out I was like “How, why, and is it any intuitive?” But I never dared to ask that until now
True, but we have lots of examples of that in English, to the point where I don’t think it’s that weird. e.g., i.e., b.c., a.d., etc., and so on. What’s even weirder to me is that we have sayings in English that use words that are otherwise not used anymore. “To and fro”, “lo and behold”, “eke out”, “inclement weather” (it’s hard to even find a definition of inclement because it’s only used to describe weather), “spick and span”, “days of yore”
In German, we too have words that only survived in specific versions. What’s really weird is that we have words like that, that died out, but a specific form survived, and then the word gets re-imported from another language with a slightly different meaning.
Take for example “Rasse” (race) and “Rassismus” (racism).
In German before WW1 the word “Rasse” was used to differentiate between the locals and the neighbouring “others”. So the usage was like “the German race”, “the French race”, “the English race”, “the Jewish race” and so on. After WW2 that word just about disappeared from the German language because it was used so heavily by the Nazis and also because it had no real meaning. They also used terms like “the Human race”. So race could be anything from “speaks another language but looks exactly like me” to “species”. It was almost exclusively (except for “the Human race”) used to dehumanize the others.
But the term “Rassismus” survived and it’s meaning is about the same as xenophobia in English. Thus, if a white person from France hates everyone from Belgium, that’s racism.
In the USA on the other hand, the word “race” was used to differentiate between the white population (which came from all over Europe) and the “others”, which in this case were Africans, Native Americans, Asians and South Americans. Like with the term “Rasse”, “race” was also used to dehumanize the others. And accordingly, “racism” only applies when someone hates people of another race by the USA definition. But unlike in German, the USA was never ruled by Nazis, and thus the word “race” was never discontinued.
And now the English word “race” is getting re-imported to the German language, but with the US meaning, because there is no German meaning left.
So right now in the German language, “Rasse” means Black, White, Asian, …, while “Rassismus” can totally be against someone who is of the same “Rasse” but speaks another language or is from another country.