ХОЛАНДСКИЯТ ЕЗИКОВЕД И СЛАВИСТ НИКОЛАС ВАН ВЕЙК (1880-1941) И ПРИНОСЪТ МУ КЪМ (СТАРО)БЪЛГАРИСТИКАТА
THE DUTCH LINGUIST ANS SLAVIST NICOLAAS VAN WIJK (1880-1941) AND HIS CONTRIBUTION TO (PALAEO)BULGARIAN STUDIES

Summary/Abstract: The famous Dutch linguist and philologist Nicolaas van Wijk (1880-1941) is considered to be the founding father of Slavic studies in the Netherlands. He studied in Amsterdam, Leipzig and Moscow. As a professor of Baltic and Slavic languages and comparative linguistics at the University of Leiden, he extensively published on questions related to the historical grammar of the Indo-European languages, on Russian literature and culture. He became an internationally acclaimed authority, whose fame abroad can be compared only to that of the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga. Undoubtedly one of his most admired scholarly accomplishments is the first volume of his monumental Geschichte der altkirchenslavischen Sprache. Phonetics and morphology (Berlin, 1927). The second volume, dealing with syntax and lexicology, unfortunately got lost during the Second World War. Less influential, apparently because they were published in Dutch, are his observations on South Slavic dialectology, in particular on the transitional dialects between Bulgarian and Serbian. Nicolaas Van Wijk repeatedly visited Bulgaria, where he had many friends among the most outstanding Bulgarian scholars. He wrote a long and vivid account of his first four-day stay in Sofia in July 1914, in which he expresses his sincere appreciation for the Bulgarian people and his cultural achievements at a very fateful moment of its existence.

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