Polabian language

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Polabian
Slüvensťă rec / Vensťĕ
The first page of Vocabularium Venedicum
Pronunciation	/slyˈvɛˑn.stʲɐ rɛt͡s/
Native to	Germany
Extinct	3 October 1756 (death of Emerentz Schultze)[1]
Revival	21st century; ≥5 known L2 speakers[2]
Language family	Indo-European Balto-Slavic Slavic West Slavic Lechitic[3] West Lechitic[4] Polabian
Language codes
ISO 639-3	pox
Linguist List	pox
Glottolog	pola1255
Linguasphere	53-AAA-bc
Grey: Former settlement area of the Polabian Slavs. Green: Uninhabited forest areas. Darker shade just indicates higher elevation.

The Polabian language,^[a] also known as Drevanian–Polabian language,^[b] Drevanian language,^[c] and Lüneburg Wendish language,^[d] is a West Slavic language that was spoken by the Polabian Slavs (German: Wenden) in present-day northeastern Germany around the Elbe. It was spoken approximately until the rise to power of Prussia in the mid-18th century – when it was superseded by Low German – in the areas of Pomoré (Mecklenburg-West Pomerania), central (Mittelmark) part of Branibor (Brandenburg) and eastern Saxony-Anhalt (Wittenberg originally part of Béla Serbia), as well as in eastern parts of Wendland (Lower Saxony) and Dravänia (Schleswig-Holstein), Ostholstein and Lauenburg). Polabian was also relatively long (until the 16th century) spoken in and around the cities of Bukovéc (Lübeck), Starigard (Oldenburg) and Trava (Hamburg). The very poorly attested Slavic dialects of Rügen seemed to have had more in common with Polabian than with Pomeranian varieties.^[5] In the south, it bordered on the Sorbian language area in Lusatia.

By the 18th century, Lechitic Polabian was in some respects markedly different from other Slavic languages, most notably in having a strong German influence. It was close to Pomeranian and Kashubian, and is attested only in a handful of manuscripts, dictionaries and various writings from the 17th and 18th centuries.

History

About 2800 Polabian words are known; of prose writings, only a few prayers, one wedding song and a few folktales survive. Immediately before the language became extinct, several people started to collect phrases and compile wordlists, and were engaged with folklore of the Polabian Slavs, but only one of them appears to have been a native speaker of Polabian (himself leaving only 13 pages of linguistically relevant material from a 310-page manuscript).^[1] The last native speaker of Polabian, a woman, died in 1756, and the last person who spoke limited Polabian died in 1825.^{[citation needed]}

The most important monument of the language is the so-called Vocabularium Venedicum (1679–1719) by Christian Hennig.

The language left many traces to this day in toponymy; for example, Wustrow (literally 'island', Polabian: Våstrüv), Lüchow (Polabian: Ljauchüw), Sagard, Gartow, Krakow etc. It is also a likely origin of the name Berlin, from the Polabian stem berl-/birl- ('swamp').

Though unorganized, language revitalization for the Polabian language is occurring in small groups. As of 2023, the language has few limited speakers, but is growing due to more resources being accessible to learn the language.^{[citation needed]}

Phonology

For Polabian the following segments are reconstructable:^[6]

Vowels

Consonants

Stress and vowel reduction

Polabian had free and mobile

Reduced vowels were very short, so much that the transcribers (who mostly spoke Low German) sometimes omitted them in places where they could be expected, which was probably not caused by the ellipsis of said vowels, but rather by their very short duration. The full vowels were noticeably long and were often marked as such in the texts.^[7]

The Lord's Prayer

This section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. The specific problem is: The Lord’s Prayer should be in Low German, not High German, since it was the former language that was spoken around the Polabians and assimilated them. Please help improve this section if you can. (May 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

The Lord's Prayer in Polabian and related Lechitic languages, compared to Upper Sorbian, Old Church Slavonic, German and English:^[8] Germanic loanwords, which are comparatively rare in the other West Slavic languages, are highlighted in bold.

Notes

References

Bibliography

See also

Polabian language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

Polabian language repository of Wikisource, the free library

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Polabian language.

• Wends
• Polabians (tribe)
• House of Griffins