Die Trasjanka und die Regiolektalisierung des Russischen in Weißrußland

Abstract Though a wealth of literature on Russian-Belorusian bilingualism and more specifically on Trasjanka has been published within recent years, the status of Trasjanka is still some matter of debate. None of the labels which have been proposed so far, seem to hit the mark. In this article it will be argued that the search for a label which will make sense, has been hampered by the fact that the language situation in Belorussia is still being interpreted in terms of bilingualism. By comparing the Belorusian situation to what is simultaneously going on in most Western European countries, among them Germany, it is hoped to demonstrate that what is going on in Belarus is more akin to processes of destandardisation and concurrent dialect-leveling and -death in monolingual dialect-standard-continua. It will also be argued that this parallel ought to be taken at face value, which implies that Russian-Belorusian bilingualism is in fact dialectal in nature and that Trasjanka is ultimately just another of the many regiolects of increasingly decentralising modern Europe.