Lower Sorbian language

(in English)

Lower Sorbian, Dolnoserbski, Dolnoserbšćina

Spoken natively in 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).

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

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], and a "clear" [l] that is not especially palatalized instead of [lʲ]. In villages and rural areas German influence is less marked, and the pronunciation is more "typically Slavic".

Stress

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

Łužyca /ˈwuʒɨtsa/ "Lusatia"

pśijaśel /ˈpɕijaɕɛlʲ/ "friend"

Chóśebuz /ˈxɨɕɛbus/ "Cottbus"

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

internat /intɛrˈnat/ "boarding school"

kontrola /kɔnˈtrɔlʲa/ "control"

september /sɛpˈtɛmbɛr/ "September"

policija /pɔˈlʲitsija/ "police"

organizacija /ɔrɡanʲiˈzatsija/ "organization"

Orthography

The Sorbian alphabet is based on the Latin script but uses diacritics such as acute accent and caron. The standard character encoding for the Lower Sorbian alphabet is ISO 8859-2 (Latin-2).

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Sorbian_language