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Lower Sorbian language

West Slavic language of eastern Germany

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Standard Lower Sorbian is one of the two literary Sorbian languages, 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 of Lower Sorbian has received structural influence from Upper Sorbian. Lower Sorbian differs from Upper Sorbian at all levels of the language system: in phonetics (the spread of the plosive consonant g; the merger of the affricate č with the hardened fricative c; the change of hard r after p, t, k into hard š; the change of ć, ʒ́ into soft fricative sibilants ś, ź), in morphology (the presence of the supine; absence of aorist and imperfect forms in dialects), and in vocabulary (bom "tree"; twarc "carpenter"; gluka "happiness" and so on, contrasted with the corresponding Upper Sorbian štom, ćěsla, zbožo). The formation of the Lower Sorbian literary norm was greatly influenced by the Upper Sorbian language. Unlike Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian is less standardized and strictly codified, characterized by instability and greater variability.

Lower Sorbian is spoken in and around the city of Cottbus in Brandenburg. 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. Most native speakers today belong to the older generations. The younger and middle generations only know the learned literary language, with German being their native language. The assimilation process in Lower Lusatia has reached such a level that one can speak of a threat to the existence of the Lower Sorbian language.

A writing system based on the Latin alphabet was created in the 16th century. The first grammar of the language in history was written in 1650 by the Lutheran pastor Jan Hoinan. The regulator of the literary language is the Lower Sorbian Language Commission, currently operating under the Sorbian cultural and educational society Matica serbska.

History

Pre-literary period

The modern Lower Sorbian dialects developed on the basis of Proto-Slavic dialects whose speakers, by the 6th–7th centuries, had occupied extensive territories on the western periphery of the Slavic linguistic area — in the middle course of the Elbe, from the Oder in the east to the Saale in the west. The early beginning of the expansion of the German language led to the assimilation of the Slavic dialects over a significant part of the ancient Lusatian area. Only a small portion of the territory where the Old Sorbian dialects were spoken has survived to the present day — Lower Sorbian dialects in the area of the Lusici tribe, and Upper Sorbian dialects in the area of the Milceni tribe.

The Sorbs never had their own statehood. For a long time, the alliance of Lusatian Serb tribes resisted German aggression and even went on the offensive, invading Frankish lands and devastating them. Nevertheless, in the 10th century the Sorbian tribal alliance was finally defeated, and the Slavic population fell under German rule. From the late 10th century onwards, for an entire millennium, the Sorbian linguistic area lay within various German-speaking states or their administrative units. This became the main reason for the gradual Germanization of the Sorbian population. Germanization in Lusatia varied in time and intensity, sometimes taking a natural course, sometimes being coercive. The result was the narrowing of the sphere of Sorbian dialect use to mainly oral everyday communication, their gradual displacement from towns into rural areas, and the shrinking of the Sorbian area almost to the point of disappearance today.

In the 13th–15th centuries, significant changes to the ethnolinguistic map of Sorbian territory were caused by a period of internal colonization. German settlers founded new villages; the Sorbs became a minority among the numerically dominant German-speaking population and gradually lost their native language, adopting German. The Sorbian linguistic area was greatly reduced, and many Slavic territories — including a number of peripheral districts of Lower Lusatia — became German-speaking. The urban population spoke German; Sorbian dialects were used mainly in the villages. At the same time, population growth and the founding of new settlements, especially in the 13th century, led to the formation of a compact Sorbian-speaking area within what is now Lower and Upper Lusatia.

Until the 16th century, the rural population of Lower Lusatia was almost entirely Sorbian; only after the Reformation did the number of Sorbs begin to decline while the German population grew. German–Sorbian bilingualism spread in different ways across districts, towns, and villages. The process was faster in peripheral areas, slower around Cottbus. Sorbs in towns were quickly Germanized; the process was slower in suburbs and slowest in villages. Until the late 18th century, Sorbian dialects remained the main means of communication for the peasantry, with German being only a second language in villages. Until the mid-16th century, the functions of the Sorbian dialects were limited mainly to oral communication within the family; they were used to a limited extent in courts (for giving testimony, though it was recorded in German), in church practice (for oral translation from German into Sorbian), and in communications from the authorities to the population.

Literary period

The first monuments of written Lower Sorbian appeared by the 16th century, in the era of the Reformation. The reformed church needed to translate liturgical books into a language understandable to parishioners. Early translations were made in different Sorbian regions for the needs of local churches, in local dialects. Due to the dominance of German in all spheres of urban life, the general illiteracy of the rural Lusatian population, and dialectal fragmentation (translations in one Sorbian dialect were not accepted by writers in another), these texts were not widely distributed. Differences in the historical development of the various Sorbian dialects, in the economic and political importance of different Sorbian regions, in the attitudes of various German feudal authorities toward the Sorbian language, the absence of a unified Sorbian cultural center, unified secular and church authority, a unified school system, and the predominance of German-speakers in towns all hindered Sorbian ethno-linguistic integration.

As a result, in the absence of supra-regional linguistic forms during the pre-literary period (from the 16th century to the second half of the 17th century), church writing developed independently in Lower and Upper Lusatia. A distinctive feature of Lower Sorbian literary development was that the first Sorbian texts appeared not in the center of Lower Lusatia but in its periphery. Translations made in the north of Lower Lusatia continued to appear even after the interruption caused by the Thirty Years’ War, in the 1650s–1660s. But by order of the Elector of Brandenburg, all books and manuscripts in Lower Sorbian were either confiscated or destroyed, and Sorbian-language worship was banned. Thus, the emerging Sorbian cultural center in northern Lower Lusatia ceased to exist, and the preconditions for the rise of a Lower Sorbian literary language in the north were eliminated.

In the last decades of the 17th century, a new stage began in the development of Lower Sorbian writing and the formation of the Lower Sorbian literary language, centered in the Cottbus district (where the German population made up only 10–15% of the total). Sorbian was the main means of oral communication in the district (especially among the rural population); it was already used as a liturgical language and, in the 18th century, began to be used in teaching in village schools. In the late 17th and throughout the 18th century, thanks to local clergy (both Sorbian and German), translations of church texts into Lower Sorbian were made in Cottbus and its surroundings. Gradually, the Cottbus dialect became a model for the rest of Lower Lusatia. However, policies toward Sorbian varied: in the Cottbus area the language was not persecuted, but in the rest of the Margraviate of Lower Lusatia a consistent policy of eradication was pursued.

The formation of the Lower Sorbian literary norm is usually dated to the publication, on the initiative of pastor G. Fabricius, of translations of Martin Luther's Catechism (1706) and the New Testament (1709). These were based on the Kocjebuz (Cottbus) dialect. In 1796 J. B. Fritz translated the Old Testament into this dialect. Attempts to create writing in the Cottbus region had also been made in the 17th century, notably by Jan Chojnan, author of a handwritten grammar. But by order of the authorities, many Sorbian manuscripts were destroyed — not only in Brandenburg but also in Saxony. Some surviving early texts were published in the 19th–20th centuries. Thanks to reprints of Fabricius's New Testament, the Cottbus dialect — described by him as the most suitable for a literary language (“the most elegant and precise”) — spread to the rest of Lower Lusatia.

In its early stage, written Lower Sorbian vocabulary consisted mainly of church terms (in the absence of secular literature), with many German borrowings and calques, hybrid formations combining German and Sorbian morphemes, no influence from other Slavic languages, unstable spelling, and inconsistent fixation of certain forms and features.

From 1815, by decision of the Congress of Vienna, Lower Lusatia became part of the Frankfurt administrative district of the Prussian province of Brandenburg. The political situation was less favorable for the Lower Sorbs than for the Upper Sorbs, since the Prussian authorities favored assimilation of Slavic peoples, unlike Saxony, which now included Upper Lusatia. In the 19th century, the main sphere of written Lower Sorbian was church life, to some extent schooling and domestic use; only a small local intelligentsia used it actively. Limited domains of use, lack of secular writing, and mass illiteracy led to a gradual divergence between the written language and popular speech, especially as Sorbs often used German outside the family and church. During the national revival from the mid-19th century, the emerging popular movement aimed to preserve the Sorbian people, to spread the Sorbian language, develop and perfect it, and grant it equal rights with German. Sorbs created cultural and scholarly societies (including Matica), published newspapers and books in their language, and promoted public education. On the one hand, the prestige and scope of Sorbian grew; on the other, in conditions of Germanization — with Sorbs required to learn German in school, the army, and Protestant churches — bilingualism spread quickly, and the number of Sorbian speakers began to decline, especially in Protestant areas of Lower and Upper Lusatia (the more cohesive Catholic Sorbs preserved their language better). Unlike the relatively more developed Upper Sorbian, the Lower Sorbian literary language remained mostly limited to church literature; secular literature, which appeared from the 1860s, was mainly translations from Upper Sorbian. Prussian minority policy almost halted publishing in Lower Lusatia, restricted Sorbian in church life, and from the 1840s banned it in schools. The lack of unified Sorbian administration, church, and schooling, along with early dialect differences, hindered the unification of Lower and Upper Sorbian literary norms. By the 19th century, many activists already understood that merging the two languages was unlikely.

In 1937–1945, Sorbian was banned in Germany. All Sorbian organizations, publishers, and presses were closed; Sorbian intellectuals were persecuted. There were attempts to completely replace Sorbian with German, even in the home. The ban hit Protestant areas hardest, including all of Lower Lusatia, which is entirely Protestant.

After World War II, the position of German strengthened again due to the resettlement of Germans from eastern territories — from Poland, the Czech lands, and elsewhere — into Lusatia. In the GDR, the Sorbs were not given autonomy; their settlement area was divided among administrative units. Still, Sorbian was recognized as equal with German, used more actively in public life, and to a limited extent in administration. Sorbs were granted cultural autonomy, Sorbian-language schools, a teachers’ college, a theatre, folk ensembles, a folk culture festival, and increased publishing. Nonetheless, the number of speakers kept declining in both the GDR and unified Germany. Sorbs continued to shift to German under its dominance in the media, public life, education, labour migration, industry, and mixed marriages. In these conditions, mixed Sorbian–German villages emerged, including in Lower Lusatia; in many districts, Sorbian has disappeared or is now on the brink of extinction.

Since 1992, the monthly television program Łužyca has been broadcast in Lower Sorbian — from 1992 to 2003 by the Brandenburg public broadcaster ORB, and since 2003 by RBB. RBB's Cottbus studio also produces several Lower Sorbian radio programs.

Historical phonetics

  • As in Polish and Czech, both Proto-Slavic reduced vowels became e in a strong position. Full vowels preceding a reduced vowel in a weak position were lengthened after the loss of the reduced vowels. Over time, vowel length distinctions were lost, and stress became fixed on the first syllable (Proto-Slavic had free stress).
  • According to J. Nalepa, nasal vowels disappeared in Lusatian in the second half of the 12th century, probably under Czech influence.
  • The affricate ʒ, as in most other Slavic languages, simplified to z: mjeza (Pol. miedza) “boundary.”
  • As in Polish and early Kashubian, soft dentals ť and ď became affricates ć and dź; this shift was phonologized by the 13th century. Later, in Lower Sorbian, these affricates lost their stop element: ć > ś, dź > ź, except after dental fricatives (rjeśaz “chain,” daś “give,” kosć “bone,” źiwy “wild,” měź “copper,” pozdźej “later” vs. Upper Sorbian rjećaz, dać, kosć, dźiwi, mjedź, pozdźe). This change took place in the mid-16th century in western dialects and about a century later in eastern ones, not affecting transitional central dialects or the Mužakow and Slepian dialects.
  • Soft c’, z’, s’ hardened; if followed by i, it became y: ducy “going,” syła “strength,” zyma “winter” (cf. Czech jdoucí, síla, zima). This change likely occurred in the early 15th century. A similar change (in Lower but not Upper Sorbian) affected soft č’, ž’, š’ by the early 16th century: cysty “clean,” šyja “neck,” žywy “alive” (vs. Upper Sorbian čisty, šija, žiwy).
  • By the mid-16th century, č became c: cas “time,” pcoła “bee” (Upper Sorbian čas, pčoła), except in the suffix -učki and after fricatives. Č also remains in loanwords and onomatopoeic words.
  • After consonants p, t, k, the sounds r and r’ became ř and ř’; then in Lower Sorbian, ř > š, ř’ > ć (later ś): pšawy “right,” tśi “three.”
  • As in Polish, hard ł became the bilabial w (first written attestations in the 17th c.), and soft ľ not before front vowels acquired “European” alveolar articulation (like in German).
  • w disappeared in initial gw- and xw- clusters (Old Slavic gvozdь > gozd “dry forest,” xvoščь > chošć “horsetail”), at the beginning of a word before a consonant, and after a consonant before u. This process began before the 13th century and ended by the 16th. Soft w’ became j between vowels, before a consonant, and finally: rukajca “glove” (Pol. rękawica), mužoju/mužeju “to a man” (Pol. mężowi), kšej “blood” (Pol. krew).
  • e became a after soft consonants and before hard ones: brjaza “birch,” kolaso “wheel,” pjac “bake,” lažaś “lie,” pjas “dog” (Upper Sorbian brěza, koleso, pjec, ležeć, pos). This change was complete by the mid-17th century and did not affect the Muskau and Slepian dialects.

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