Lower Sorbian () is a West Slavic minority language spoken in eastern Germany in the historical province of Lower Lusatia, today part of Brandenburg. Standard Lower Sorbian is one of the two literary Sorbian languages, the other being the more widely spoken

Upper Sorbian Upper Sorbian (), occasionally referred to as "Wendish", is a minority language spoken by Sorbs in Germany in the historical province of Upper Lusatia, which is today part of Saxony. It is grouped in the West Slavic language branch, together ...

. The Lower Sorbian literary standard was developed in the 18th century, based on a southern form of the Cottbus dialect. The

standard variety A standard language (also standard variety, standard dialect, and standard) is a language variety that has undergone substantial codification of grammar and usage, although occasionally the term refers to the entirety of a language that includes ...

of Lower Sorbian has received structural influence from Upper Sorbian. Lower Sorbian is spoken in and around the city of Cottbus in Brandenburg. Signs in this region are typically bilingual, and Cottbus has a '' Lower Sorbian Gymnasium'' where one language of instruction is Lower Sorbian. It is a heavily endangered language. Most native speakers today belong to the older generations.

Phonology

The phonology of Lower Sorbian has been greatly influenced by

contact Contact may refer to: Interaction Physical interaction * Contact (geology), a common geological feature * Contact lens or contact, a lens placed on the eye * Contact sport, a sport in which players make contact with other players or objects * ...

with

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

, especially in Cottbus and larger towns. For example, German-influenced pronunciation tends to have a voiced uvular fricative instead of the alveolar trill . In villages and rural areas, German influence is less marked, and the pronunciation is more "typically Slavic".

Consonants

* are bilabial, whereas are labiodental. * are alveolar , whereas are dental . * have been variously transcribed with and . Their actual phonetic realization is flat postalveolar in all of the Lower Sorbian-speaking area. This is unlike in standard Upper Sorbian, where these are palato-alveolar . * is voiceless , unlike Upper Sorbian, where it is voiced .

Final devoicing and assimilation

Lower Sorbian has both

final devoicing Final-obstruent devoicing or terminal devoicing is a systematic phonological process occurring in languages such as Catalan, German, Dutch, Breton, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Turkish, and Wolof. In such languages, voiced obstruents in fina ...

and regressive voicing

assimilation Assimilation may refer to: Culture *Cultural assimilation, the process whereby a minority group gradually adapts to the customs and attitudes of the prevailing culture and customs **Language shift, also known as language assimilation, the progre ...

: *''dub'' "oak" is pronounced *''susedka'' "(female) neighbor" is pronounced *''licba'' "number" is pronounced The hard postalveolar fricative is assimilated to before : *''šćit'' "protection" is pronounced

Vowels

The vowel inventory of Lower Sorbian is exactly the same as that of Upper Sorbian. It is also very similar to the vowel inventory of Slovene. * is retracted to after hard consonants. * are diphthongized to in slow speech. * The and distinctions are weakened or lost in unstressed syllables. * is phonetically central .

Stress

Stress in Lower Sorbian normally falls on the first

syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...

of the word: * ''Łužyca'' " Lusatia" * ''pśijaśel'' "friend" * ''Chóśebuz'' " Cottbus" In loanwords, stress may fall on any of the last three syllables: * ''internat'' "boarding school" * ''kontrola'' "control" * ''september'' "September" * ''policija'' "police" * ''organizacija'' "organization" Most one-syllable prepositions attract the stress to themselves when they precede a noun or pronoun of one or two syllables: * ''na dwórje'' "on the courtyard" * ''pśi mnjo'' "near me" * ''do města'' "into the city" (note that the of ''město'' becomes when unstressed) However, nouns of three or more syllables retain their stress: * ''pśed wucabnikom'' "in front of the teacher" * ''na drogowanju'' "on a journey"

Orthography

The

Sorbian alphabet The Sorbian alphabet is based on the ISO basic Latin alphabet but uses diacritics such as the acute accent and the caron, making it similar to the Czech and Polish alphabets. (This mixture is also found in the Belarusian Latin alphabet.) The stan ...

is based on the Latin script but uses

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

s such as the

acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...

and caron.

Sample

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Lower Sorbian:

(All people are born free and equal in their dignity and rights. They are given reason and conscience and they shall create their relationships to one another according to the spirit of brotherhood.)Omniglot
/ref>

References

Bibliography

* * * * *

External links

Online course for Lower and Upper Sorbian
(English, Sorbian, German)

( RealAudio)
Lower Sorbian Vocabulary List
(from the World Loanword Database)

Dictionaries