Upper Sorbian language

Upper Sorbian (), occasionally referred to as Wendish (), is a minority language spoken by Sorbs in the historical province of Upper Lusatia, today part of Saxony, Germany. It is a West Slavic language, along with Lower Sorbian, Czech, Polish, Silesian, Slovak, and Kashubian. It is now spoken by fewer than 10,000 people, mostly in Budyšin and its immediate countryside.

History

The history of the Upper Sorbian language in Germany began with the Slavic migrations during the 6th century AD. Beginning in the 12th century, there was a massive influx of rural Germanic settlers from Flanders, Saxony, Thuringia and Franconia. This so-called "" (eastern settlement or expansion) led to a slow but steady decline in use of the Sorbian language. In addition, in the Saxony region, the Sorbian language was legally subordinated to the German language. Language prohibitions were later added: In 1293, the Sorbian language was forbidden in Berne castle before the courts; in 1327 it was forbidden in Zwickau and Leipzig, and from 1424 on it was forbidden in Meissen. Further, there was the condition in many guilds of the cities of the area to accept only members of German-language origin.

However, the central areas of the Milzener and Lusitzer, in the area of today's Lusatia, were relatively unaffected by the new German language settlements and legal restrictions. The language therefore flourished there. By the 17th century, the number of Sorbian speakers in that area grew to over 300,000. The oldest evidence of written Upper Sorbian is the ''Burger Eydt Wendisch'' document, which was discovered in the city of Bautzen and dates to the year 1532.

Upper Sorbian in Germany

There are an estimated 18,000 speakers of Upper Sorbian. Almost all of these live in the state of Saxony, chiefly in the district of Bautzen (Budyšin). The stronghold of the language is the village of Crostwitz (Chrósćicy) and the surrounding municipalities, especially to the west of it. In this core area, Upper Sorbian remains the predominant vernacular. In this area, Sorbian is an official language and children are taught Sorbian in schools and day cares. Other concerted efforts to preserve the language through media, club, and related resources have continued into the 21st century. In spite of these efforts, numbers of Upper Sorbian speakers were still considered to be dwindling. It has been suggested that this may be in part because of a lack of understanding of the benefits of bilingualism.

Phonology

Vowels

The vowel inventory of Upper Sorbian is exactly the same as that of Lower Sorbian.

* Word-initial vowels are rare, and are often preceded by a non-phonemic glottal stop , or sometimes . appear in word-initial position only in recent borrowings, whereas the diphthongs never occur in this position.
* The near-close can also be analyzed as diphthongs . Here, they are analyzed as monophthongs.
* The diphthongal allophones of are falling: . occurs only under strong sentence stress in monosyllabic words. Conversely, is a more common realization of than .
* has three allophones:
** Open-mid between hard consonants and after a hard consonant;
** Mid between soft consonants and after a soft consonant (excluding in both cases);
** Diphthong with a mid onset before .
* has two allophones:
** Diphthong with a mid onset before labial consonants;
** Open-mid in all other cases.
* Additional diphthongs arise from r-vocalization, as in German. For instance, 'University' may be pronounced .
* The distinction between on the one hand and on the other is weakened or lost in unstressed syllables.
* is phonetically central . It is somewhat higher after soft consonants.

Consonants

* are bilabial, whereas are labiodental.
** are strongly palatalized.
** is a somewhat velarized bilabial approximant , whereas is a strongly palatalized bilabial approximant .
** is very rare. Apart from loanwords, it occurs only in two Slavonic words: ''zełharny'' 'deceitful' and ''zełharnosć'' 'deceitfulness', both of which are derivatives of ''łhać'' 'to lie'. Usage of these words is typically restricted to the Bautzen dialect, as speakers of the Catholic dialect use ''łžeć'' and its derivatives.
* are alveolar , is alveolo-palatal , whereas are dental .
** before (in the case of also before ) are weakly palatalized . also reports palatalized as allophones of . Among these, the labiodental are extremely rare.
** are velar in front of velar consonants.
** is very rare. In many cases, it merges with into .
** are very rare. According to , the phonemic status of is controversial.
* In most dialects, are palato-alveolar. This is unlike Lower Sorbian, where these consonants are laminal retroflex (flat postalveolar) (Lower Sorbian does not have a voiced counterpart). Laminal retroflex realizations of also occur in Upper Sorbian dialects spoken in some villages north of Hoyerswerda.
* are velar, whereas are uvular.
** An aspirated is a morpheme-initial allophone of in some cases, as well as a possible word-initial allophone of .
** is typically accompanied with trilling of the uvula , so that 'fault' is typically pronounced .
** does not occur word-initially, whereas does not occur word-finally.
** are typically realized as fricatives or approximants . They can be trilled in clear and careful pronunciation. Furthermore, can also be realized as a voiceless fricative . It can also be vocalized in the syllable coda, as in 'University'. They are never alveolar , which is an archaic pronunciation.
** Soft is strongly palatalized.
* An epenthetic is inserted before a post-vocalic soft consonant, yielding a diphthong. If the soft consonant occurs before or , it is often realized as hard, and the vowels merge to .
* In literary language, the contrast between hard and soft consonants is neutralized in word-final position. For instance, the letter represents the sequence in this position (as in ''dźeń'' 'day'), not a single phoneme .

Final devoicing and assimilation

Upper Sorbian has both final devoicing and regressive voicing assimilation, both word-internal and across word boundaries. In the latter context, is voiced to . Regressive voicing assimilation does not occur before sonorants and .

Stress

* Words consisting of up to three syllables are stressed on the first syllable.
* Foreign words, such as ''student'' 'student', preserve their original accent.

Samples

The Lord's Prayer in Upper Sorbian:

:

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

:

(All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.)Sorbian
at Omniglot.com

See also

*Lower Sorbian language

References

Bibliography

*
*
* Ross, Malcom. 2020. Syntax and contact-induced language change. In A. Grant (ed.) ''The Oxford Handbook of Language Contact''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 123–154. pper Sorbian and German contact, with resulting changes in Sorbian*
*
*

Further reading

*
*

External links

Online course for Upper and Lower Sorbian
(English, Sorbian, German)
Kurs serbskeje rěče
introductory texts of the lessons included in the Sorbian language textbook ''Curs practic de limba sorabă''

Dictionaries

Upper Sorbian dictionary with common phrases

Upper Sorbian phraseology dictionary

SorbWord


at Leipzig University

Sorbian information page
at Leipzig University

Wortschatz.de

Czech-Sorbian and Sorbian-Czech

at ''slovnik.vancl.eu''''Mudra 2.0''

German-Sorbian

at ''Boehmak.de''

Sorbian-German

{{DEFAULTSORT:Upper Sorbian Language

Sorbian languages
Sorbian, Upper
Sorbian, Upper
Endangered Slavic languages
Culture of Saxony
Upper Lusatia
Slavic languages written in Latin script