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) ...

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 betwee ...

in the historical province of Lower Lusatia, today part of

Brandenburg Brandenburg (; nds, Brannenborg; dsb, Bramborska ) is a 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 area of 29,480 squ ...

. 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 min ...

, the other being the more widely spoken Upper Sorbian. 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 includ ...

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 ...

. 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 lang ...

. 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 * C ...

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 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 prog ...

: *''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 ...

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'' "

" 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 ...

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 sta ...

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 ...

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 ''diacrit ...

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 ...

and caron.

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 rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt ...

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 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-fi ...

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

Dictionaries