Tag Archives: endangered languages

Istro-Romanian and the Hurren Bequest: Documentation of an Endangered Language

Istro-Romanian is a ‘Daco-Romance’ dialect, closely related to Romanian and spoken by 200-250 people in North-East Istria, Croatia. Their villages are separated by a mountain, Mount Učka, which explains the continued existence of two dialects, northern and southern IR. The Istro-Romanian area has shrunk since the Middle Ages, when it included the islands Krk and Rab off the Croatian Coast in the Adriatic See. The Istro-Romanians probably descend from pastoral people, who settled in Istria in the 15th century, away from the Romanian homeland searching for new pastures for their flocks. This is the most likely hypothesis about their origins, although a movement of people in the opposite direction cannot be entirely ruled out.

2016-06-IRmapIstro-Romanian and Croatian

Istro-Romanian is the only Romance language that shows extensive influence from a Slavic language, i.e. Croatian, not only in vocabulary and verbal system but also in word order which is remarkably free. For example

bovu    ɨn‘trεba  asiru

Ox.the asks        ass.the

can be translated as ‘The ox asks the ass’ or as ‘The ass asks the ox’. The appropriate translation can only be deduced from the context, which would not be the case in Romanian or in Croatian.

The Istro-Romanian speakers don’t have a great sense of linguistic identity, to the extent that they do not have an indigenous name for their language. All speakers are bilingual in Croatian. There is hardly any written IR, although nowadays social media are used as a means of writing in the local language, all be it without a standardized grammar. IR is mainly orally transmitted and is not used in education in any way.

Given this situation, it is remarkable that so many works about the language have been published. A selection of titles, kept in the Taylorian, can be see below. These books were brought out after the Istro-Romanian seminar on 2nd December, given by Prof Martin Maiden, professor of Romance Linguistics at Oxford who is a specialist in Romanian.

The display included several dialect atlases and a textbook.

The Hurren Bequest

The highlight of the book display was an unpublished type-written grammar, written by Anthony Hurren, who did his DPhil at Oxford in 1972. This grammar was donated to the Taylorian as part of the Hurren bequest. It was ready to be published in 1999 but sadly, this never happened due to Hurren’s death. The book deals with phonology, grammar and lexicon of the language and contains a lovely folk tale in the southern dialect about a cat, a cock, a donkey, and a sheep who decide to travel around the world. Since there is not much written material available in IR, Hurren had to collect his language data first before he could contemplate writing a grammar. He interviewed informants from all villages in the region in the 1960s, in preparation for his Oxford DPhil thesis A linguistic description of Istro-Romanian (1972). A list of informants is provided in Appendix B in the grammar which is also based on these sound recordings.

The many hours of sound recordings provide unique Istro-Romanian language material on  reel to reel tape. All is now digitised and kept in the Taylorian as part of the Hurren bequest. A transcription project is underway.

I thank Prof Maiden for his enlightening seminar on 2nd December 2015 in the Taylorian and I am most grateful that I could have the text of his lecture on which most of this blog is based.

Johanneke Sytsema, Linguistics Librarian, Taylor Institution Library

Further reading:

Atlas

Flora, R. (2003) Micul atlas lingvistic al graiurilor istroromâne (MALGI).  București : Editura Academiei Române. (Taylor Library L.ATL.B.ROU.13)

Dictionary

Neiescu, Petru. (2011- ) Dicționarul dialectului istroromân. București : Editura Academiei Române. (Closed stack)

Language studies

Popovici, J. (1914). Dialectele romîne din Istria.  Halle a.S. (Taylor Library ARA.1.BV.5/4)

Puşcariu, S. (1926). Studii istroromâne. Bucharest; Cultura naţională. (Taylor Institution Library ARA.1.BV.5/1)

Sârbu, R. and Frăţilă, V. (1998). Dialectul istroromân : texte și glosar. Timişoara: Amarcord. (Taylor Institution Library ARA.1.BV.5/9)

Kovačec, A. (1971). Descrierea istroromânei actuale. Bucharest: Editura Academiei. (Taylor Institution Library  ARA.1.BV.5/7)

Hurren, H. A. (1969). Verbal aspect and archi-aspect in Istro-Rumanian. La Linguistique 2:59-90. (Closed stack and Online)

Hurren, H. A.  (1971). A linguistic description of Istro-Rumanian. Thesis (D.Phil.)–University of Oxford. (Weston Library, closed stack)

Scărlătoiu, Elena.(1998) Istroromânii şi istroromânâ. Relații lingvistice cu slavii de sud : cuvinte de origine veche slavă.. București : Editura Staff. (Taylor Institution Library ARA.1.BV.5/8)

Endangered Languages and language documentation

The Taylorian is known for its collections on Modern European Languages, be it East- or West-European. Apart from the main collections including German, French, Russian, Polish to  mention a few, the Taylorian also houses less well known collections on minority languages, such as Welsh and Breton within the Celtic section or Occitan and Yiddish. To familiarise a wider audience with these ‘hidden treasures’ of the Taylorian, the seminar series ‘Introducing Endangered Languages’ was organised in Michaelmas Term 2015. The seminars were kindly given by Oxford specialists.

Prof. Mary Dalrymple gave an introduction to language endangerment in the first seminar and paid special attention to a critically endangered language Dusner in West Papua with only three speakers left. Some of the questions she discussed were :

How many Languages are there? What constitutes a language?

The total number of languages in the world can only be estimated at around 7000. It is difficult to be certain, and it depends on what counts as a language. E.g. is Chinese one language or are Mandarin, Cantonese and other dialects regarded as separate languages?  And is Arabic one language or does Egyptian Arabic count as a separate language? Assuming Chinese is one language, than it is the most spoken language in the world with more than a billion speakers. Second comes Spanish, followed by English.  Here is a list of most spoken languages from the Ethnologue.

 

ethnologue

When is a language endangered?

Interestingly, 94% of the world population speaks only 6% of the world languages, so most people speak a main stream language as their first language. This also means that 6% of the world population speaks 94% of the world languages, so each of these languages have relatively small numbers of speakers. Numbers of speakers may vary: 10.000, 1000, 100 or even just 10 first language speakers. Over 300 languages have no first language speakers at all, all speakers are bilingual and use the minority language only in certain ‘domains’ e.g. home and family, whereas the major language may be used at school, work etc. Many of these languages without first language speakers are at risk to be ‘overtaken’ by the mainstream language.

ethnologue 2

Most users of the Taylorian will have heard of European minority languages, such as Breton or Frisian, although languages like Friulian or Istro-Romanian are less well known. Most countries in Europe can be proud of having one or a few minority languages spoken within their borders. In terms of ‘language density’ however Europe is fairly ‘poor’, other regions in the world may have many more languages within one country. One of the most densely ‘languaged’ regions is South-East Asia. It is assumed that there are at least 1000 minority languages in Papua New Guinea alone, many of which have not even been documented. In the language-rich province of West-Papua in Indonesia there is a language on the brink of dying out: Dusner, an Austronesian language, only spoken by three people over 60. Fortunately, Prof. Dalrymple was just in time to meet them in April 2011. Flying out in a hurry to West-Papua after Dr Mofu had discovered Dusner, she then travelled to the idyllic village of Dusner that can only be reached by boat.

Dusner

Atlas of the world's languages in danger Moseley, Christopher & Nicolas, Alexandre. Paris: Unesco, 2010. Taylor Library Linguistics Collection P40.5.L33 ATL 2010.

Atlas of the world’s languages in danger Moseley, Christopher & Nicolas, Alexandre. Paris: Unesco, 2010. Taylor Library Linguistics Collection P40.5.L33 ATL 2010.

Together with Dr Mofu who holds a D.Phil. from Oxford, she interviewed these last speakers  to record their language. The Dusner speakers are featured below (from the project website http://dusner.clp.ox.ac.uk/). For those interested in the sound of Dusner, the website holds audio recordings of the interviews.

These interviews were the basis of a language documentation project which resulted in the publication of the first grammar of Dusner  (by Mary Dalrymple & Suriel Mofu).

grammar

Small languages like Dusner are really valuable from a linguistic point of view, since they often maintain the more complex linguistic constructions, whereas major languages will have been simplified to make them easier to acquire by adults. English is an example of a language that simplified over time. For example In Anglosaxon there were different verbal endings as in helpe, hilpst, hilpƥ, helpaƥ, helpe, helpen (present tense of helpan ‘to help’) whereas in Modern English there are only two forms in the present: help, helps.

 

 

A remarkable feature of Dusner is the number system: it is a base five system, this means that there are separate words for one, two, three, four and five but six is expressed as ‘five one’ and seven as ‘five two’. Ten is a new word, eleven is ‘ten one’ and sixteen is expressed as ‘ten five one’.

Dusner numbers

The grammar is the only one book on Dusner ever published and this is held in the Bodleian. The Taylorian holds a good collection on endangered languages more in general, the list of recommended resources can be found below.

I’m grateful to Prof. Dalrymple for letting me use her slides and for giving me permission to use the table of  Dusner numbers and the two tables on numbers of speakers, both based on information from Ethnologue.

Johanneke Sytsema, Linguistics Librarian

Further Reading

Dusner

Dalrymple, Mary and Suriel Mofu  (2012) Dusner. Muenchen : Lincom Europa
Closed Stack  M12.F01716

 Florey, Margaret J (2010) Endangered languages of Austronesia. Oxford : Oxford University Press.
Closed Stack  M09.E12948

Language Endangerment
De Dominicis, Amedeo (2006). Undescribed and endangered languages : the preservation of linguistic diversity. Newcastle-upon-Tyne : Cambridge Scholars.
Closed Stack. Also online through SOLO.

Crystal, David (2014). Language Death. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
Taylor Institution Library Linguistics Collection P40.5.L33 CRY 2014

Harris, K.D. (2007) When Languages Die. The extinction of the World’s Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge. Oxford: OUP.
Taylor Institution Library Teaching Collection P.40.5.L33 HAR 2007

Evans, Nicholas (2010). Dying words : endangered languages and what they have to tell us. Chichester, U.K. ; Malden, MA : Wiley-Blackwell.
Taylor Institution Library Linguistics Collection P40.5.E53 EVA 2009.

Fishman, Joshua A. (1991). Reversing language shift : theoretical and empirical foundations of assistance to threatened languages. Clevedon : Multilingual Matters.
Taylor Institution Library Linguistics Collection ALN.8000.A.45

Fishman, Joshua A (2001). Can threatened languages be saved? : reversing language shift, revisited : a 21st century perspective. Clevedon : Multilingual Matters.
Bodleian Library Lower Gladstone Link Open Shelves (UBHU) M01.F01417.

Gordon, Raymond G. (2005). Ethnologue : languages of the world. Dallas, SIL International.
Closed Stack M05.D01883.

Miyaoka, Osahito, Osamu Sakiyama and Michael E. Krauss (2007) The vanishing languages of the Pacific rim. Oxford : Oxford University.
Taylor Institution Library Linguistics Collection P381.P3 VAN 2007

Nettle, Daniel & Suzanne Romaine (2000) Vanishing Voices: the extinction of the world’s languages.Oxford: OUP.
Taylor Institution Library Teaching Collection P40.5.L33 NET 2000

Thomason, Sarah Grey & Verónica María (2015)Endangered languages : an introduction
Taylor Institution Library Teaching Collection  P40.5.E53 THO 2015

Tsunoda, Tasaku (2006). Language endangerment and language revitalization : an introduction. Berlin : Mouton de Gruyter.
Taylor Institution Library Teaching Collection P40.5 L28 TSU 2004

Atlases

Wurm, S. A.& Theo Baumann (1996). Atlas of the world’s languages in danger of disappearing. Paris : Unesco ; Canberra : Pacific Linguistics.
Bodleian Library Weston RBMSS Open Shelves G1.B1.53 Maps.

Moseley, Christopher & R.E. Asher (1994). Atlas of the world’s languages. London : Routledge.
Taylor Institution Library (Graduate Studies Room) L.ATL.B.AA.4
(See also the online interactive version http://www.unesco.org/languages-atlas/index.php)

Moseley, Christopher & Alexandre Nicolas (2010) Atlas of the world’s languages in danger. 3rd ed. Paris : United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
Taylor Institution Library Linguistics Collection P40.5.L33 ATL 2010

Moseley, Christopher (2012). The UNESCO atlas of the world’s languages in danger : context and process. Cambridge : World Oral Literature Project.
Closed Stack

Personal accounts
Everett, Daniel Leonard (2009). Don’t sleep, there are snakes : life and language in the Amazonian jungle. London : Profile.
Closed Stack M09.G01855

Abley, Mark (2005).Spoken here : travels among threatened languages. London : Arrow Books.
Taylor Institution Library Teaching Collection P40.5.L33 ABL 2005

Drysdale, Helena.(2002). Mother tongues : travels through tribal Europe. London : Picador.
Closed Stack M02.G02997

Web Resources

Foundation for Endangered Languages http://www.ogmios.org/bibliography/index.php

Ethnologue http://www.ethnologue.com/

The Endangered Languages Project. A project to support language preservation and documentation around the world by the Alliance for Linguistic Diversity.The catalogue contains information on 3228 languages. Includes interactive map. http://www.endangeredlanguages.com

SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics) http://www.sil.org/about/endangered-languages (includes interactive map and list of publications)

Breton at the Taylorian

Following on from her popular lecture in the ‘Introducing Endangered Languages’ seminar organised by the Taylor Institution Library in Michaelmas 2015, Dr Holly Kennard gives an overview of the library’s Breton collection from the perspective of a linguistics researcher.

Introduction

Breton is a Celtic language, part of the Brythonic branch of languages, closely related to Welsh and Cornish. It is spoken by about 200 000 people in western Brittany, in northwest France. It has a long history of folktales and traditional music, much of which has been passed down orally through the generations.

There are no longer any monolingual speakers, and Breton is considered to be an endangered language, with most of its speakers now quite elderly. However, language activists have been campaigning for the future of Breton, and this has seen a resurgence of interest in the language, with the establishment of Breton-medium education, broadcasting, as well as an increase in material published in Breton.

Breton linguistics

I have had an interest in Breton for a number of years, beginning first as an undergraduate studying French and Linguistics, and continuing through to my DPhil, where I focused on Breton morphosyntax in contrasting groups of older and younger speakers. Breton presents an opportunity to study an endangered minority language as well as language revival, which I find fascinating, but I am also interested in aspects of its grammar – for my thesis I examined word order patterns and initial consonant mutation, and I am about to embark upon a project looking at grammatical gender and metrical stress.

Linguistics

The particular strengths of the collection at the Taylor are its breadth – it has a wide range of both books and periodicals – and its combination of classic texts (like early descriptions and dictionaries) and very up-to-date publications. I often use the ‘classic’ linguistics texts such as Kenneth Jackson’s Historical Phonology of Breton and Roparz Hémon’s Historical Morphology and Syntax of Breton.

 

 

Although written from a historical standpoint, these seminal works provide detailed and valuable descriptions of Breton, as well as explaining a range of regional variation. The collection houses a number of dictionaries from different periods, and with different foci: early dictionaries such as Grand dictionnaire franҫais-breton, as well as more modern editions such as the Elementary Breton-English & English-Breton dictionary, which is likely to be more accessible to a beginner. There is a large monolingual Breton dictionary, Geriadur brezhoneg gant skouerioù ha troiennoù, and then there are the more specialist works such as Per Denez’s dictionary of the Breton of Douarnenez, a dictionary of Old Breton, and even a dictionary of Breton place-names, Albert Deshayes, Dictionnaire des noms de lieux bretons and family names, Albert Deshayes, Dictionnaire des noms de famille bretons.

Geriadur brezhoneg gant skouerioù ha troiennoù ( An Here, 1995)

Geriadur brezhoneg gant skouerioù ha troiennoù (An Here, 1995)

I find the selection of Breton grammars particularly useful. The classic is Kervella’s Yezhadur bras ar brezhoneg, but as it is written in Breton, it is perhaps less accessible to a general audience. My default choice for a reference grammar is Favereau’s Grammaire du breton contemporain, as well as Press’s book, A grammar of modern Breton, which is written in English.

 

Atlas 2

Of course, the collection goes far beyond reference works such as the above. From my perspective as a linguistics researcher, the descriptions of dialects are very valuable – often, researchers have published detailed doctoral research into an individual dialect, which is really interesting. Le breton de Léchiagat, by André Sinou is one such example. Of course there are also the Linguistic atlases, which deal specifically with regional variation – compiled over the twentieth century, they also allow a glimpse of language change in progress, and are a valuable reference point for linguistics researchers. This is particularly important for an endangered language like Breton, since documentation of regional forms while they are still being spoken is vital.

 

The collection also contains Middle and Early Modern Breton texts, as well as dictionaries of Old and Middle Breton, and etymological works, allowing researchers to document longer-term language change, and study how Breton differs from its closest neighbours, Cornish and Welsh.

Léon Fleuriot, A Dictionary of old Breton : historical and comparative = Dictionnaire du vieux Breton (Toronto, 1985), pp. 242-43

Léon Fleuriot, A Dictionary of old Breton : historical and comparative = Dictionnaire du vieux Breton (Toronto, 1985), pp. 242-43

The Catholicon is a particularly famous work – first published in 1464, it was not only the first Breton dictionary, but also the first French dictionary, and gives words in Breton, French and Latin.

Le Catholicon de Jehan Lagadeuc : dictionnaire breton, français et latin (Lorient : E. Corfmat, [1868?]

Le Catholicon de Jehan Lagadeuc : dictionnaire breton, français et latin (Lorient : E. Corfmat, [1868?])

In my own work, I am obviously interested in the above, along with other linguistics works. I also frequently refer to the Breton journals that the library holds; in addition to the Journal of Celtic Linguistics, which is a more general journal, I use La Bretagne linguistique and Klask, which is the Celtic journal produced in Rennes. However, there is also a wide range of Breton-language literature available in the Taylor. LiteratureIn addition to books written entirely in Breton, there are also bilingual (French-Breton) texts, and a range of translations, which are helpful for language learners.

Danevelloù divyezhek, An Here-Al Liamm, 2002

Danevelloù divyezhek, (An Here-Al Liamm, 2002)

 

Not only is this interesting as a mark of how much publishing in Breton (at one time very rare!) has increased, it also constitutes in itself a valuable corpus. I hope to draw on this as I begin my next project, when I will be looking at the Breton of younger speakers/writers.

 

 

 

Dr Holly Kennard,  Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics, University of Oxford

Breton –  Book Display for Endangered Languages Seminar 4th November 2015

All shelfmarks relate to the Taylor Institution Library

Language history and bilingualism

Abalain, Hervé. 1995. Histoire de la langue bretonne (Paris: Editions Jean-Paul Gisserot) C.6501.112

Broudic, Fañch. 1995. La Pratique du Breton de l’Ancien Régime à nos jours (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes) C.9400.91

Gwennig, Youenn et al. 2002. Danevelloù Divyezhek / Nouvelles Bilingues (An Here – Al Liamm) C.6640.63

Linguistic Atlases

Le Dû, Jean. 2001. Nouvel atlas linguistique de la Basse-Bretagne (Brest: CRBC, Université de Bretagne Occidentale) X.OUT.C.27

Le Roux, Pierre. 1924-1963. Atlas linguistique de la Basse-Bretagne (Paris: Champion) L.ATL.A.FR.7

Dictionaries and Grammars

Croix, Alain and Jean-Yves Veillard. 2013. Dictionnaire du patrimoine breton 3rd edition. (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes) DC611B847 DIC 2013

Favereau, Frañses. 1993. Dictionnaire du breton contemporain (Morlaix: Skol Vreizh) REF.M.21.BRE.2 (BT)

Favereau, Francis. 1997. Grammaire du breton contemporain (Morlaix: Skol Vreizh) C.6501.111

Press, J. Ian. 1986. A Grammar of Modern Breton (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter) C.6501.90

Hemon, Roparz. 1975. A historical morphology and syntax of Breton (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies) C.6501.41

Humphrey Lloyd Humphreys. 1995. Phonologie et morphosyntaxe du parler breton de Bothoa en Saint-Nicolas-du-Pélem (Côtes-d’Armor) (Brest: Ar Skol Vrezoneg) C.6501.105

Jackson, Kenneth Hurlstone. 1967. A historical phonology of Breton (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies) C.6501.24

Literature

Favereau, Frañses and Hervé Le Bihan. 2006. Littératures de Bretagne: mélanges offerts à Yann-Ber Piriou (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes) PB2858.L48 LIT 2006

La Villemarqué, Théodore Hersart, Vicomte de and Kemener, Yann-Fañch. 1999. Barzaz Breiz: Chants populaires de la Bretagne (Paris: Editions du Layeur) C.9400.107

Madeg, Mikael. 2011. Nan heb e dad (Brest: Emgleo Breizh) PB2905.M28 N36 MAD 2011

Gibson, Jacqueline and Gwyn Griffiths. 2006. The turn of the ermine: an anthology of Breton literature (London: Francis Boutle) PB2873 TUR 2006

 

 

Sorbian : an endangered language

On 28th October, the world leading expert on Sorbian Dr Gerald Stone, fellow of Hertford College, gave an inspiring lecture in the seminar series ‘Introducing Endangered Languages’ which is being organised by the Taylor Institution Library.

The Sorbs or ‘Wenden’ as they are called in German, are a Slavic nation that have always lived in Central Europe. Nowadays the Sorbs live in the area around Bautzen/Budissin and Cottbuss in Germany, close to the Polish and the Czech border. In former times, the Sorbian area streched to the rivers Elbe and Saale in the west. When Martin Luther preached in Wittenberg in the early 16th century he would have had Sorbian speakers among his German speaking congregation.

Sorbian is divided in two dialects, known as Upper-Sorbian (around Bautzen) and Lower- Sorbian (north of Cottbuss). Interestingly, the difference between the two Sorbian dialects is very much based on religious differences between Protestants and Catholics who lived in fairly closed communities in separate villages. Since intermarriage did not happen much, the villages kept their religious identity and traditions and therefore their dialects for a long time. Although there are morphological and phonological differences in addition to lexical differences between Upper and Lower Sorbian, they are still regarded as one language. The future of Sorbian seems best guaranteed in Catholic villages, mainly in Upper Sorbia, where children speak Sorbian, whereas in Protestant villages that are mainly in the north, there is hardly anyone below the age of 50 still speaking the language. The Sorbischer Sprachatlas (Sorbian language atlas) gives a detailed overview of the Sorbian dialects and the parishes in which the dialects are spoken. Just across the Polish border, no Sorbian or related dialect is spoken at all due to political circumstances after WWII when Poles from east Poland settled in the area.

H.Fasske et.al. Sorbischer Sprachatlas or Serbski rěčny atlas,Taylor Slavonic Library.

H.Fasske et.al. Sorbischer Sprachatlas or Serbski rěčny atlas,Taylor Slavonic Library.

The number of Sorbian speakers is estimated at over 6000 for Lower Sorbian and 15,000 for Upper Sorbian. The number of Sorbian speakers diminished greatly during the Nazi era, Sorbs being displaced or worse. The socialist government of the GDR took the opposite view and protected the Sorbs, enabled Sorbian schools and subsidised the publishing house Domowina, which still exists. Nowadays, the lack of economic prospects in the region is a threat for the future of Sorbian, and many young people seek employment further west.

Bilingualism in Lusatia

All Sorbian speakers are bilingual, and like to see this reflected in street name signs. In the GDR era when Sorbian was supported by the state, both languages were represented in the same font size, whereas nowadays, the German names are presented bigger than the Sorbian names. As the joke goes, this is because Germans are short-sighted….

street name

Sorbian traditions

Sorbians have lived in the area for centuries and maintained their traditions. A well known tradition is the Easter riding or ‘Osterreiten’. At Easter, the Catholic men from one village ride in procession to the next village to announce the good news of Jesus’ resurrection. Men from this village then pay a visit in return. All ride on black horses, each procession can encompass up to 400 riders in black hats.

osterreiten

Sorbian in print

The Sorbian exhibition in the Voltaire Room shows some of the early history of Sorbian in print: Vocabularium latino-serbicum (Bautzen, 1721) of Jurij Hawštyn Swětlik ) and the first Upper Sorbian grammar, Jakub Xaver Ticin’s Principia linguae wendicae quam aliqui wandalicam vocant, first published in Prague in 1679.

The Taylorian also holds a rare copy of the hymnbook by August Hersen who translated hymns by Graf Nikolaus von Zinzendorf into Sorbian in 1750. This copy Hłós teje njewjesty Jezusoweje…was donated to the Taylorian by Dr Stone in 1973.

Gesangbuch

The first Bible in Sorbian was printed in 1728 in Bautzen. Dr Stone kindly lent his copy of this leather bound bible for the exhibition.

I thank Dr Stone for supplying the captions for the exhibition, for his time spent in preparing the exhibition and telling me about the Sorbs. Without his contributions, I could not have written this blog. His latest book will be published in December this year.

book G.Stone

Johanneke Sytsema

Linguistics Librarian

Further reading:

Dictionaries

  1. The largest Upper Sorbian dictionary with English translations (approximately 20,000 headwords) is Gerald Stone, Upper Sorbian – English Dictionary (Bautzen, 2002).
  1. The leading modern dictionary of Lower Sorbian is Manfred Starosta, Dolnoserbsko-      nimski słownik (Bautzen, 1999), containing about 45,000 headwords. The entries provide  German equivalents, examples, and phraseology.
  2. The biggest Sorbian dictionary of all is Karl Ernst Mucke, Wörterbuch der niederwendischen Sprache und ihrer Dialekte, 3 vols (St Peterburg-Prague, 1911-28) (over 2,000 pages). It contains more pages than any other Sorbian dictionary, but, because the entries are more detailed, the number of headwords (fewer than 40,000) is smaller than in Starosta. Much of its contents was collected orally by Mucke during his field-work in Lower Lusatia.

Grammars

      1. Mucke, a dominant figure in Sorbian studies, is also the author of a detailed historical and comparative grammar of Lower Sorbian (including Upper Sorbian data): Historische und vergleichende Laut- und Formenlehre der niedersorbischen (niederlausitzisch-wendischen) Sprache (Leipzig, 1891), reprinted Leipzig, 1965. It makes use of mansucript sources and other material collected by the author.
      2. The definitive synchronic account of modern Upper Sorbian morphology is Helmut Faßke (in collaboration with Siegfried Michalk), Grammatik der obersorbischen Schriftsprache der Gegenwart: Morphologie (Bautzen, 1981).
      3. The most comprehensive grammar of modern Lower Sorbian in Pětr Janaš, Niedersorbische Grammatik für den Schulgebrauch, 2 ed. (Bautzen, 1984).

Language geography and history

      1. The Sorbischer Sprachatlas by Helmut Fasske, H. Jentsch and Siegfried Michalk (Bautzen, 1968-96), presents data from some 140 villages.
      2. Evidence of the languages spoken by the Slav inhabitants of trans-Elbian Germany in the Middle Ages is mainly onomastic. The definitive study of the place names of the southern (Sorbian) half of the area is Ernst Eichler, Slawische Ortsnamen zwischen Saale und Neiße, 4 vols (Bautzen, 1985-2009).
      3. G. Stone.1993. Sorbian. London:m Routledge.
      4. G. Stone.2015. Slav Outposts in Central European History: The Wends, Sorbs and Kashubs. London: bloomsbury.

 Sorbian Literature

    1. Beno Budar (b. 1946) is a leading Upper Sorbian writer of both poetry and prose. He has made a speciality of collecting the memoirs of ordinary people who lived through the Second World War (1939-45). His collection Tež ja mějach zbožo (I too was lucky) contains the recollections of Sorbian men who served in the Wehrmacht. The first edition (2005) was quickly sold out (unusual for a Sorbian book). This is the 3rd edition.
    2. Sorbian literature tends to be limited to small-scale works (lyric poetry, short stories, novellas). Novels are very rare. Paradiz by Křesćan Krawc (Christian Schneider) (b. 1938), the saga of a Sorbian family in the twentieth century (438 pp.), is one of the longest works of fiction in Sorbian ever published.