Lower Sorbian () is a
West Slavic minority language
A minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a territory. Such people are termed linguistic minorities or language minorities. With a total number of 196 sovereign states recognized internationally (as of 2019) and ...
spoken in eastern
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
in the historical province of
Lower Lusatia
Lower Lusatia (; ; ; szl, Dolnŏ Łużyca; ; ) is a historical region in Central Europe, stretching from the southeast of the German state of Brandenburg to the southwest of Lubusz Voivodeship in Poland. Like adjacent Upper Lusatia in the sou ...
, today part of
Brandenburg
Brandenburg (; nds, Brannenborg; dsb, Bramborska ) is a states of Germany, state in the northeast of Germany bordering the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony, as well as the country of Poland. With an ar ...
.
Standard Lower Sorbian is one of the two literary
Sorbian languages
The Sorbian languages ( hsb, serbska rěč, dsb, serbska rěc) are the Upper Sorbian language and Lower Sorbian language, two closely related and partially mutually intelligible languages spoken by the Sorbs, a West Slavic ethno-cultural mino ...
, 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 of Lower Sorbian has received structural influence from Upper Sorbian.
Lower Sorbian is spoken in and around the city of
Cottbus
Cottbus (; Lower Sorbian: ''Chóśebuz'' ; Polish: Chociebuż) is a university city and the second-largest city in Brandenburg, Germany. Situated around southeast of Berlin, on the River Spree, Cottbus is also a major railway junction with exte ...
in
Brandenburg
Brandenburg (; nds, Brannenborg; dsb, Bramborska ) is a states of Germany, state in the northeast of Germany bordering the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony, as well as the country of Poland. With an ar ...
. 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
An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead langu ...
. 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
**Ge ...
, especially in Cottbus and larger towns. For example, German-influenced pronunciation tends to have a
voiced uvular fricative
The voiced uvular fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , an inverted small uppercase letter , or in broad transcription if rhot ...
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
In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a labial consonant articulated with both lips.
Frequency
Bilabial consonants are very common across languages. Only around 0.7% of the world's languages lack bilabial consonants altogether, including Tli ...
, whereas are
labiodental
In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.
Labiodental consonants in the IPA
The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:
The IPA chart shades out ''labio ...
.
* 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:
*''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
Stress may refer to:
Science and medicine
* Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition
* Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...
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
Lusatia (german: Lausitz, pl, Łużyce, hsb, Łužica, dsb, Łužyca, cs, Lužice, la, Lusatia, rarely also referred to as Sorbia) is a historical region in Central Europe, split between Germany and Poland. Lusatia stretches from the Bóbr ...
"
* ''pśijaśel'' "friend"
* ''Chóśebuz'' "
Cottbus
Cottbus (; Lower Sorbian: ''Chóśebuz'' ; Polish: Chociebuż) is a university city and the second-largest city in Brandenburg, Germany. Situated around southeast of Berlin, on the River Spree, Cottbus is also a major railway junction with exte ...
"
In
loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...
s, 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
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...
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
A caron (), háček or haček (, or ; plural ''háčeks'' or ''háčky'') also known as a hachek, wedge, check, kvačica, strešica, mäkčeň, varnelė, inverted circumflex, inverted hat, flying bird, inverted chevron, is a diacritic mark ( ...
.
Sample
Article 1 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the Human rights, rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN Drafting of the Universal De ...
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>
See also
*
Upper Sorbian language
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 ...
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
*
External links
Online course for Lower and Upper Sorbian(English, Sorbian, German)
(
RealAudio
RealAudio, or also spelled as Real Audio is a proprietary audio format developed by RealNetworks and first released in April 1995. It uses a variety of audio codecs, ranging from low-bitrate formats that can be used over dialup modems, to high-fid ...
)
Lower Sorbian Vocabulary List(from the World Loanword Database)
Dictionaries
Czech-Lower Sorbian and Lower Sorbian-Czech
Slovník DolnoLužická Srbština <=> Čeština
German–Lower Sorbian
Deutsch-Niedersorbisches Wörterbuchat dolnoserbski.de
Korpus GENIE – GEsprochenes NIEdersorbisch/Wendisch
Lower Sorbian–German
Dolnoserbsko-nimske słownikiat dolnoserbski.de]
Lexikalische Übungen und Terminologieat the Universität Leipzig
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lower Sorbian Language
Lower Sorbian language,
Endangered Slavic languages
Sorbian, Lower
Sorbian languages
Sorbian, Lower
Slavic languages written in Latin script