Ok, I don’t know much about politics, but I know how to spell it…
This is just one example of of a handful of words I’ve seen where the letter ‘c’ gets replaced by a ‘k’ and nobody seems to notice.
…except me, of course. I looked up “realpolitik” at www.dictionary.com and got this etymology:
As you can see, realpolitik is real + politik (politik being “politic”).
I understand that realpolitik is a word in its own right and can be spelled however it’s supposed to be spelled, but if I were going to put two words together, I’d at least make sure they’re spelled correctly.
What are the rules for this type of letter swapping? Does the letter ‘k’ bring other meanings along with it? Unfortunately, this is the only example I can think of at the time, but I swear there are more out there. I’ll post them if I think of them, but in the meantime, does anybody know what the deal is with this?
You’re misreading the etymology. The word didn’t come from German (a derivation): it is German (a borrowing). Germans get to spell their own language howsoever they want to. Hence folksvag’n is spelled Volkswagen.
You missed the part where it said it was “German”. “Realpolitik” is a German word, and so it is spelled in the German way. If you were to translate it into English, you would get something like “pragmatic politics” or “practical politics”.
Most of the time when you see Realpolitik used it will either be in italics or sometimes quotes, to indicate that it is a foreign word being used in English. If it were fully assimilated, it would not be differentiated.
