The Polabian language was a
West Slavic language that was spoken by the
Polabian Slavs
Polabian Slavs ( dsb, Połobske słowjany, pl, Słowianie połabscy, cz, Polabští slované) is a collective term applied to a number of Lechitic ( West Slavic) tribes who lived scattered along the Elbe river in what is today eastern Germ ...
(german: Wenden) in present-day northeastern
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...
around the
Elbe
The Elbe (; cs, Labe ; nds, Ilv or ''Elv''; Upper and dsb, Łobjo) is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Giant Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia (western half of the Czech Rep ...
(''Łaba/Laba/Labe'' in Slavic) river, from which derives its name ("po Labe" – ''unto Elbe'' or ''
raveling
George Henry Raveling (born June 27, 1937) is an American former college basketball player and coach. He played at Villanova Wildcats men's basketball, Villanova University, and was the head coach at Washington State Cougars men's basketball, Was ...
on Elbe''). It was spoken approximately until the rise to power of
Prussia
Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an ...
in the mid-18th century – when it was superseded by
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 ...
– in the areas of
Pomoré (Mecklenburg-West Pomerania), central (
Mittelmark) part of
Branibor (Brandenburg) and eastern
Saxony-Anhalt
Saxony-Anhalt (german: Sachsen-Anhalt ; nds, Sassen-Anholt) is a state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony, Thuringia and Lower Saxony. It covers an area of
and has a population of 2.18 million inhabitants, making it the ...
(
Wittenberg
Wittenberg ( , ; Low Saxon: ''Wittenbarg''; meaning ''White Mountain''; officially Lutherstadt Wittenberg (''Luther City Wittenberg'')), is the fourth largest town in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Wittenberg is situated on the River Elbe, north of ...
originally part of
Béla Serbia), as well as in eastern parts of
Wendland (
Lower Saxony
Lower Saxony (german: Niedersachsen ; nds, Neddersassen; stq, Läichsaksen) is a German state (') in northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ...
) and
Dravänia (Schleswig-Holstein),
Ostholstein and
Lauenburg). Polabian was also relatively long (until the 16th century) spoken in and around the cities of
Bukovéc (Lübeck),
Starigard (Oldenburg) and
Trava (Hamburg). The very poorly attested Slavic dialects of
Rügen
Rügen (; la, Rugia, ) is Germany's largest island. It is located off the Pomeranian coast in the Baltic Sea and belongs to the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
The "gateway" to Rügen island is the Hanseatic city of Stralsund, w ...
seemed to have had more in common with Polabian than with
Pomeranian varieties. In the south, it bordered on the
Sorbian language area in
Lusatia.
By the 18th century,
Lechitic Polabian was in some respects markedly different from other
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavs, Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic language, Proto ...
, most notably in having a strong
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 ...
influence. It was close to
Pomeranian and
Kashubian Kashubian can refer to:
* Pertaining to Kashubia, a region of north-central Poland
* Kashubians, an ethnic group of north-central Poland
* Kashubian language
See also
*Kashubian alphabet
The Kashubian or Cassubian alphabet (''kaszëbsczi alf ...
, and is attested only in a handful of manuscripts, dictionaries and various writings from the 17th and 18th centuries.
History
About 2800 Polabian words are known; of prose writings, only a few prayers, one wedding song and a few folktales survive. Immediately before the language became extinct, several people started to collect phrases and compile wordlists, and were engaged with folklore of the
Polabian Slavs
Polabian Slavs ( dsb, Połobske słowjany, pl, Słowianie połabscy, cz, Polabští slované) is a collective term applied to a number of Lechitic ( West Slavic) tribes who lived scattered along the Elbe river in what is today eastern Germ ...
, but only one of them appears to have been a native speaker of Polabian (himself leaving only 13 pages of linguistically relevant material from a 310-page manuscript). The last native speaker of Polabian, a woman, died in 1756, and the last person who spoke limited Polabian died in 1825.
The most important monument of the language is the so-called ''Vocabularium Venedicum'' (1679–1719) by Christian Hennig.
The language left many traces to this day in toponymy; for example,
Wustrow "Place on the island",
Lüchow (Polabian: ''Ljauchüw''),
Sagard,
Gartow,
Krakow etc. It is also a likely origin of the name
Berlin
Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...
, from the Polabian stem ''berl-''/''birl-'' (swamp).
Phonology
For Polabian the following segments are reconstructable:
Vowels
Consonants
Stress and vowel reduction
Polabian had free and mobile
stress, which means its placement could not be predicted based on the shape of the word, and it could shift to other syllables in
inflection
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and ...
and
derivation, much like in
Russian. Four-syllable words with stress on the last syllable had
secondary stress on the second one.
Stress was interconnected with vowel reduction. All vowels except /ə/ and /ɐ/ were full vowels and could only occur in stressed syllables, or in the syllable immediately preceding primary stress, unless it was itself preceded by a syllable with secondary stress. Thus for example a four syllable word stressed on the third syllable had full vowels in the second and third syllable; but if this same word had stress on the last syllable, it had full vowels in the second and fourth syllable.
Reduced vowels were very short, so much that the transcribers (who mostly spoke
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 ...
) sometimes omitted them in places where they could be expected, which was probably not caused by the
ellipsis
The ellipsis (, also known informally as dot dot dot) is a series of dots that indicates an intentional omission of a word, sentence, or whole section from a text without altering its original meaning. The plural is ellipses. The term origin ...
of said vowels, but rather by their very short duration. The full vowels were noticeably long and were often marked as such in the texts.
The Lord's Prayer
The
Lord's Prayer
The Lord's Prayer, also called the Our Father or Pater Noster, is a central Christian prayer which Jesus taught as the way to pray. Two versions of this prayer are recorded in the gospels: a longer form within the Sermon on the Mount in the Gosp ...
in Polabian and related
Lechitic languages, compared to
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 ...
,
Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic () was the first Slavic literary language.
Historians credit the 9th-century Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius with standardizing the language and using it in translating the Bible and other ...
, German and English:
[Polabian version quoted afte]
TITUS project
/ref> Germanic loanwords, which are comparatively rare in the other West Slavic languages, are highlighted in bold.
Notes
References
*
*
*
*
*
*''Słownik etymologiczny języka Drzewian połabskich'', Part 1: ed. Tadeusz Lehr-Spławiński & Kazimierz Polański, Wrocław, 1962, from Part 2 on: ed. K. Polański, Wrocław, 1971–
*Kazimierz Polański & Janusz Sehnert: ''Polabian-English Dictionary''. The Hague: Mouton 1967
See also
*Wends
Wends ( ang, Winedas ; non, Vindar; german: Wenden , ; da, vendere; sv, vender; pl, Wendowie, cz, Wendové) is a historical name for Slavs living near Germanic settlement areas. It refers not to a homogeneous people, but to various peopl ...
* Polabians (tribe)
* Veneti
*House of Griffins
The House of Griffin or Griffin dynasty (german: Greifen; pl, Gryfici, da, Grif) was a dynasty ruling the Duchy of Pomerania from the 12th century until 1637. The name "Griffins" was used by the dynasty after the 15th century and had been take ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Polabian Language
Lechitic languages
Extinct Slavic languages
Languages of Germany
Languages extinct in the 18th century