Lower Sorbian language

Lower Sorbian
Dolnoserbski, Dolnoserbšćina
Pronunciation	[ˈdɔlnɔˌsɛrskʲi]
Native to	Germany
Region	Brandenburg
Native speakers	7,000  (1995)
Language family	Indo-European Balto-Slavic Slavic West Slavic Sorbian Lower Sorbian
Writing system	Latin (Sorbian alphabet)
Language codes
ISO 639-2	dsb
ISO 639-3	dsb
Linguasphere	53-AAA-ba < 53-AAA-b <53-AAA-b...-d (varieties: 53-AAA-baa to 53-AAA-bah)

Lower Sorbian (Dolnoserbski) is a Slavic minority language spoken in eastern Germany in the historical province of Lower Lusatia, today part of Brandenburg. It is one of the two literary Sorbian languages, the other being Upper Sorbian.

Lower Sorbian is spoken in and around the city of Cottbus in Brandenburg. Signs in this region are usually bilingual, and Cottbus has a Gymnasium where one language of instruction is Lower Sorbian. It is a heavily endangered language. Most native speakers are in the oldest generation today.

Phonology

Bilingual road sign in Cottbus, Germany

The phonology of Lower Sorbian has been greatly influenced by contact with German, especially in Cottbus and larger towns. For example, German-influenced pronunciation tends to have a voiced uvular fricative [ʁ] instead of the alveolar trill [r]. In villages and rural areas German influence is less marked, and the pronunciation is more "typically Slavic".

Consonants

The consonant phonemes of Lower Sorbian are as follows:

		Bilabial		Labiodental		Dental	Alveolar		Postalveolar	Alveolo-palatal	Palatal	Velar		Glottal
		plain	pal.	plain	pal.		plain	pal.				plain	pal.
Plosive	voiceless	p	pʲ			t						k	kʲ
	voiced	b	bʲ			d						ɡ	ɡʲ
Affricate	voiceless						t͡s		t͡ʃ	t͡ɕ
	voiced								d͡ʒ	d͡ʑ
Nasal		m	mʲ			n				nʲ
Fricative	voiceless			f	fʲ		s		ʃ	ɕ		x		h
	voiced				vʲ		z		ʒ	ʑ
Rhotic							r	rʲ
Approximant		w								l	j

Lower Sorbian has both final devoicing and regressive voicing assimilation:

• /dub/ "oak" is pronounced [dup]
• /susedka/ "(female) neighbor" is pronounced [susetka]
• /lit͡sba/ "number" is pronounced [lʲid͡zba]

The postalveolar fricative /ʃ/ is assimilated to [ɕ] before /t͡ɕ/:

• /ʃt͡ɕit/ "protection" is pronounced [ɕt͡ɕit]

Vowels

The vowel phonemes are as follows:

Monophthongs	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ	u
Open-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Open	a

Diphthongs	Centering	Ending in /j/	Ending in /w/
Starting close	iɪ	ij  ɨj  uj	iw  ɨw  uw
Starting mid		ej  ɔj	ɛw  ow
Starting open		aj	aw

Stress

Stress in Lower Sorbian normally falls on the first syllable of the word:

• Łužyca [ˈwuʒɨt͡sa] "Lusatia"
• pśijaśel [ˈpɕijaɕɛl] "friend"
• Chóśebuz [ˈxɨɕɛbus] "Cottbus"

In loanwords, stress may fall on any of the last three syllables:

• internat [intɛrˈnat] "boarding school"
• kontrola [kɔnˈtrɔla] "control"
• september [sɛpˈtɛmbɛr] "September"
• policija [pɔˈlʲit͡sija] "police"
• organizacija [ɔrɡanʲiˈzat͡sija] "organization"

Orthography

The Sorbian alphabet is based on the Latin script but uses diacritics such as acute accent and caron.

External links

• Lower Sorbian language at Ethnologue (16th ed., 2009)
• (German) (Lower Sorbian) Dolnoserbski radio program (RealAudio)
• Lower Sorbian Vocabulary List (from the World Loanword Database)

Dictionaries

German–Lower Sorbian

• (German) (Lower Sorbian) at dolnoserbski.de
• (German) (Lower Sorbian) at Korpus GENIE

Lower Sorbian–German

• (German) (Lower Sorbian) at dolnoserbski.de
• (German) (Lower Sorbian) Lexikalische Übungen