The Lusatian language is among the West Slavic dialects, spoken by less than 100 thousand people. It cannot be classified as popular, and every year there are fewer speakers, but the language structure itself has retained several features that distinguish it from other Slavic dialects and make it interesting to study.
Description and geography of distribution
Where is Lusatian spoken? For explanation, it is used by the so-called Lusatians, the Lusatian Serbs living in Germany. This is one of the few peoples of the state, professing the Lutheran or Catholic faith. It is interesting that these Slavs speak two languages - their native language and German.
That is why a characteristic feature of the Lusatian language is a large number of Germanisms - borrowings from German vocabulary.
Also, the language has some features:
- Dual.
- The adjective has no short form.
Now there are 34 letters in the language, and some of them are usedexclusively in proper names, as well as foreign borrowings.
Speak
The Lusatian language has two types of dialects - Upper and Lower Lusatian, they are similar, but a number of differences can be distinguished:
- Phonetic system: some sounds are pronounced differently depending on the dialect.
- Vocabulary. Both dialects have unique words, however, native speakers will have no difficulty in understanding each other.
- In morphology. Thus, exclusively Lower Lusatian dialects have the verbal forms of the aorist and imperfect, only Upper Lusatian dialects have supin, a special verbal noun.
The appearance of two dialects is due to the fact that earlier there were two independent dialects of Serbol Luzhitsk, which were used by residents of different regions. However, not all researchers adhere to this position, some linguists believe that the language has always been one, but due to various features, it had a clearly expressed disunity. So, the Upper Lusatian dialect is characteristic of the Serbs living in Budishin and areas to the west of this city. The dialect itself is heterogeneous and includes several dialects:
- Western Catholic;
- Buddish;
- Kulovsky;
- Golan;
- East Lanese.
The Lower Lusatian dialect is common in the city of Khoshebuz and its environs. It is spoken by no more than 8 thousand people, and most of the speakers are already elderly. Several dialects:
- Khoshebuz;
- Northwest;
- Northeast;
- specific dialect of the village of Horns.
Transitional dialects between Upper and Lower Lusatian can be heard in some localities.
History of language development
This Slavic language developed on the basis of the tribal dialects of the northwestern Slavs, so there are many Proto-Slavic features in phonetics in its system. Starting from the 13th century, the Lusatian peasants were constantly subjected to the oppression of the German feudal lords, who tried to impose not only their religion, but also their speech. That is why the Lusatian language is rich in German loanwords. But, despite the pressure, the Serbs managed to create their own script, which appeared on the basis of Latin in the 16th century. At the same time, the Bible was translated into this Slavic language, books were printed for the first time. In the middle of the 16th century there was a clear division of the language into two dialects, two literary dialects were formed.
In the 17th century, the first grammars appeared: in 1640 - Lower Lusatian, in 1679 - Upper Lusatian. The Latin-Serbolussian dictionary was published in the 20s of the 18th century. Later printed works of art appeared in the Lusatian language. Despite the fact that Serbs - native speakers lived on German territory, they managed to preserve their unique speech. That is why the question “in which state the Lusatian language is spoken” can be given a very definite answer - in Germany, but in the area of the country where the Slavs - Serbs live.
The current state of the language
The Lusatian language has a very limited scope of use and therefore many researchers suggest that it will gradually fall into disuse, and the only German language will reign on the territory of Lusatia. Let's figure out who speaks the Lusatian language and in what situations. First of all, this dialect is used in communication between family members, while German is used in business. Services are also held in Serbian Lusatian, and certain subjects are taught as part of the school course. But today's youth is losing interest in their native dialect, the language is not very popular, so its speakers are becoming less and less every year.
Phonetic features
Having considered in which country the Lusatian language is spoken, let's move on to a description of its characteristic features.
There are 7 vowels, while there is one low-rise phoneme, two upper-mid and lower-mid, three high-rise phonemes. Two vowel sounds are close in sound to diphthongs. There are 27 consonant sounds in the language, they differ in the way and place of formation, they can either have a soft version of the sound, or do without it. In the table, we present a comparison of the system of consonant phonemes in Lusatian and a number of other Slavic languages.
| Language | Lusatian | Polish | Czech | Slovak |
| According to the method of articulation | ||||
| Explosive | + | + | + | + |
| Aspirated explosives | + | - | - | |
| Nasal | + | + | + | + |
| Trembling | + | + | + | + |
| Affricates | + | + | + | + |
| Fricatives | + | + | + | + |
| Sliding approximants | + | + | + | + |
| Sidelines | + | + | + | + |
| According to the place of education | ||||
| Labial | + | + | + | + |
| Labio-dental | + | + | + | + |
| Dental | - | + | + | + |
| Alveolar | + | + | + | + |
| Postalveolar | + | - | - | - |
| Palatals | + | + | + | + |
| Rear-lingual | + | + | + | + |
| Uvular | + | - | - | - |
| Glottal | + | - | + | + |
Differences between Polish, Czech, Slovak, Lusatian languages can already be seen at the level of phonetics. So, in Polish there are 6 vowels, in Czech there are 9, they differ in the length of the sound. And unlike Slovak, diphthongs are not characteristic of Lusatian phonetics, some vowels differ only in a tendency to diphthongization. Aspirated plosives of the listed Slavic languages are unique to Lusatian. Another difference in the phonetic structure of the Lusatian language is the absence of dental consonants and the presence of postalveolar ones.
Accent
The Lusatian dialect is inherent inexpiratory, power stress, when the stressed syllable is characterized by the application of a certain muscular effort to pronounce it. The first syllable of a word is most often stressed. This language is similar to Czech and Slovak. In Polish, it almost always falls on the penultimate syllable.
Features of morphology and syntax
There are several features of the grammatical structure of the language:
- The presence of 10 parts of speech: three names, pronouns, verbs, adverbs and auxiliary (preposition, conjunction, particle), interjections.
- A noun has categories of gender (there are three of them: masculine, neuter and feminine), number (singular, plural, dual), case (there are 6 of them, as in Russian, there is also a vocative form), personality and animation.
- Adjectives belong to one of three categories (qualitative, relative and possessive), can form degrees, but do not have a short form.
- Verb forms are diverse, there are several past tenses.
- In the construction of sentences, one can note the following feature: the members of the sentence are arranged in the order "subject - object - predicate". For example, in Russian, the sentence would be worded like this: “Grandma strokes the cat.”
The Lusatian language is a unique grammatical phenomenon in which features of the Slavic language and German borrowings are intertwined. In some ways, it is similar to Czech, Polish, even Russian, but still remains original.
