Löbauer dialect
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Spoken in |
Germany : Upper Lusatia | |
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The Löbauer dialect ( Upper Sorbian Lubijska narěč ) was a now extinct south-eastern dialect of Upper Sorbian , which was spoken in the Sorbian villages around the town of Löbau in Upper Lusatia until the middle of the 20th century . He was characterized in particular by a number of phonetic archaisms that made him stand closer to Old Slavonic than the Sorbian dialects spoken further west. It can be assumed that the last speakers of the Löbauer dialect died in the 1960s or 1970s.
location
Towards the end of the 19th century , some villages to the west and northwest of Löbau were mostly Sorbian-speaking. B. Großdehsa , Oelsa and Breitendorf - while the majority of the Löbauer townspeople have always been German-speaking. In the places further east, such as Kittlitz , Glossen or Bellwitz , Sorbian was already in a minority position at that time, but was still spoken, mainly by older residents. As a rule, the Sorbian inhabitants of this region had no education in their mother tongue and therefore only spoke the local dialect, which differed in some points from the dialects around Bautzen , on which the standard language was based.
Differences to the standard Sorbian language
Suffix -i
Jan Arnošt Smoler described some striking differences in the appendix to his work, Volkslieder der Wenden in Upper and Lower Lusatia, which he published together with Leopold Haupt . For example, the adverbial ending was not implemented with the suffix -je , as is usual in standard language , but with -i (e.g. stajni instead of stajnje - "always, constantly"). However, the ending -i also occurred with various nouns (e.g. dawani instead of dawanje - "giving"; mysli instead of mysle - "the thoughts").
Prefix wu-
The standard language prefix wu- (“out-” or “out-”) was usually implemented as wy- in the Löbauer dialect (e.g. wydać instead of wudać - “to give out”; wymjo instead of wumjo - “the udder”). Smoler points out that the realization as wy- is “more original” than the wu used in the standard language . Later, some words in the standard language were adapted to the etymological spelling that has always been used in the Löbauer dialect (e.g. wusoki → wysoki - "high").
Pronunciation of ć
In contrast to Serbo-Croatian , for example, there is no longer any pronunciation difference between č and ć in the modern Upper Sorbian language . The latter sound developed from the Old Slavonic "-ть" (roughly -tj ) and appears mainly as a verb ending in the infinitive . In Russian , this old Slavonic form of the verb ending is mostly still used today as "-ть"; in other Slavic languages it differs from it. While the regular infinitive ending in modern Upper Sorbian as well as in neighboring Polish is -ć , the pronunciation of ć in the Löbauer dialect was preserved as tj or cj, i.e. the pronunciation difference between č and ć (e.g. pytacj instead of pytać - "to seek"; z miłostje instead of z miłosće - "by grace").
Dative ending with masculine
The dative ending -ej, which is common in the Upper Sorbian standard language and most dialects, for animated masculines in the singular was often implemented as -owi in the Löbauer dialect , as is done in Czech to this day (e.g. synowi instead of synej - "the son" ; kralowi instead of kralej - "the king").
literature
The Löbauer dialect was hardly written. A remarkable - because very early - exception is the translation of Luther's catechism by Wenceslaus Warichius from 1595, which - according to the origin of the translator - was written in the Löbauer dialect. Gregorius Martini's translation of the seven psalms of penance was also done in this dialect. These early writings are among the first ever printed Sorbian works and were therefore created at a time when the Sorbian language had not yet been standardized. Subsequent authors and language planners oriented themselves to a large extent on the existing written work, so that the Löbauer dialect became a basis for the emerging Upper Sorbian standard language, despite its peripheral location alongside the Bautzen dialect .
swell
- Joachim Leopold Haupt, Johann Ernst Schmaler: Folk songs of the Wends in the Upper and Lower Lusatia . JM Gebhardt, 1841, p. 277 f . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ernst Tschernik: The development of the Sorbian population . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1954, p. 103 ff .