Upper Sorbian language

Upper Sorbian language
Upper Sorbian, occasionally referred to as Wendish, is a minority language spoken by Sorbs, Germany, in the historical province of Upper Lusatia, which is today part of Saxony. It is grouped in the West Slavic language branch, together with Lower Sorbian, Czech, Polish, Slovak and Kashubian.
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 monument, which was discovered in the city of Bautzen and dates to the year 1532.
Upper Sorbian in Germany
There are an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 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.
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.
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.
The diphthongs can also be analyzed as , introducing a close-open distinction to the mid vowels, as in Slovene. Here, they are analyzed as diphthongs.
Both of the diphthongs are falling: . Both can be monophthongized to . is the usual realization of ; the narrow opening diphthong occurs only under strong sentence stress in monosyllabic words. Conversely, is commonly diphthongal .
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.)
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. [Upper Sorbian and German contact, with resulting changes in Sorbian]
Further reading
External links
Online course for Upper and Lower Sorbian (English, Sorbian, German)
Course in Upper Sorbian
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
Sorbian 'language practice' page at Leipzig University
Sorbian information page at Leipzig University
Wortschatz.de
Czech-Sorbian and Sorbian-Czech
at slovnik.vancl.eu
German-Sorbian
at sibz.whyi.org
at Boehmak.de
Sorbian-German
at Boehmak.de
at sibz.whyi.org
Sorbian languages
Sorbian, Upper
Sorbian, Upper
Endangered Slavic languages
Culture of Saxony
Upper Lusatia
Slavic languages written in Latin script