Low Lusatian German (in German: ''Niederlausitzer Mundart'' (also English: Low Lusatian dialect)) is a variety of
Central German
Central German or Middle German (german: mitteldeutsche Dialekte, mitteldeutsche Mundarten, Mitteldeutsch) is a group of High German dialects spoken from the Rhineland in the west to the former eastern territories of Germany.
Central German di ...
spoken in northern
Saxony and southern
Brandenburg within the regions of
Lower Lusatia (
Cottbus) and the northern part of
Upper Lusatia (
Hoyerswerda). It is well-defined from the
Low German
:
:
:
:
:
(70,000)
(30,000)
(8,000)
, familycolor = Indo-European
, fam2 = Germanic
, fam3 = West Germanic
, fam4 = North Sea Germanic
, ancestor = Old Saxon
, ancestor2 = Middle L ...
dialects around and north of Berlin, as well as the Saxon dialect group of present-day Saxony and the
Slavic language of the
Sorbs.
Both regions were strongly influenced by different dialects, especially after
World War II. Refugees from
East Prussia
East Prussia ; german: Ostpreißen, label=Low Prussian; pl, Prusy Wschodnie; lt, Rytų Prūsija was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1773 to 1829 and again from 1878 (with the Kingdom itself being part of the German Empire from 187 ...
and
Silesia settled there after their dispossession from former German areas. After the foundation of the
German Democratic Republic and an economical development because of a stronger extraction of
lignite
Lignite, often referred to as brown coal, is a soft, brown, combustible, sedimentary rock formed from naturally compressed peat. It has a carbon content around 25–35%, and is considered the lowest rank of coal due to its relatively low heat ...
, people from
Mecklenburg,
Thuringia,
Saxony, and
Saxony-Anhalt moved to the Lusatia region to benefit from the development. Due to this influence of other German dialects, Low Lusatian never formed a too strong variation from standard German. For people moving now into this area, the dialect is easy to learn and influences their spoken language quite quickly.
Language
Low Lusatian German lacks region-specific words. It contains
syncopes and
apocope
In phonology, apocope () is the loss (elision) of a word-final vowel. In a broader sense, it can refer to the loss of any final sound (including consonants) from a word.
Etymology
''Apocope'' comes from the Greek () from () "cutting off", from ...
s, which are used in nearly every German dialect. The only somewhat different
articulation is the
guttural , where Standard German's ending is instead :
At the beginning of a word, the is always spoken, but it is nearly inaudible within a word. The same effect can be seen on the letter which also mostly vanishes in the endings, the changing of to / , and the stretching of / to :
The short is spoken similarly to the Standard German ( or ):
Another sign is a different form of the perfect:
{, class="wikitable" style="margin: 1em auto 1em auto"
! rowspan="2", English
! colspan="2", Standard German
! colspan="2", Lower Lusatian German
, -
! spelling
! IPA
! spelling
! IPA
, -
, it was switched off , , es wurde abgeschaltet , , , , es wurde abgeschalten , , {{IPA,
›s vua̯dÉ™ ˈapɡəʃaltnÌ©}
References
*Astrid Stedje (1987). ''Deutsche Sprache gestern und heute.'' Universitätstaschenbuchverlag
*Columns of regional newspapers written in Low Lusatian German (http://www.lr-online.de)
Central German languages
German dialects
Languages of Germany