Upper Sorbian ( endonym : hornjoserbšćina ), occasionally referred to as Wendish , is a minority language spoken by Sorbs , in the historical province of Upper Lusatia , which is today part of Saxony , Germany . It is grouped in the West Slavic language branch, together with Lower Sorbian , Czech , Polish , Silesian , Slovak , and Kashubian .
16-466: Strehla ( Upper Sorbian : Strjela , pronounced [ˈstʁʲɛla] ) is a small town in the district of Meißen , Saxony , Germany . It is located on the river Elbe , north of Riesa . This place name means arrow in Sorbian . Strehla includes the following subdivisions: Strehla was first mentioned in 1002, when its castle was set on fire by Polish King Boleslaw I, on his way back to Poland from
32-757: A Soviet Guards rifle regiment. The later encounter on the same day at 4:40 p.m. in Torgau, about twenty miles to the north, would go into history books as the official link-up. Upper Sorbian language The history of the Upper Sorbian language in Germany began with the Slavic migrations during the 6th century AD. Beginning in the 12th century, there was a massive influx of rural Germanic settlers from Flanders , Saxony , Thuringia and Franconia . This so-called " Ostsiedlung " (eastern settlement or expansion) led to
48-619: A meeting with German King Henry; starting the German-Polish War of 1002–1018. During this war, Strehla went back and forth between Polish and German rule. It is situated on the Via Regia Lusatiae Superioris (Royal road of Upper Lusatia ), which connected Görlitz to Leipzig . The castle of Strehla belonged to the Pflugk family from the 14th century until 1945. The Battle of Strehla between Austria and Prussia took place around
64-695: A slow but steady decline in use of the Sorbian language. In addition, in the Saxony region, the Sorbian language was legally subordinated to the German language. Language prohibitions were later added: In 1293, the Sorbian language was forbidden in Berne castle before the courts; in 1327 it was forbidden in Zwickau and Leipzig , and from 1424 on it was forbidden in Meissen . Further, there was
80-574: Is Icelandic , with [l̥ r̥ n̥ m̥ ɲ̊ ŋ̊] for the corresponding voiced sonorants [l r n m ɲ ŋ]. Voiceless [r̥ l̥ ʍ] and possibly [m̥ n̥] are hypothesized to have occurred in various dialects of Ancient Greek . The Attic dialect of the Classical period likely had [r̥] as the regular allophone of /r/ at the beginning of words and possibly when it was doubled inside words. Hence, many English words from Ancient Greek roots have rh initially and rrh medially: rhetoric , diarrhea . English has
96-507: Is restricted to the consonantal subset—that is, nasals and liquids only, not vocoids (vowels and semivowels). Whereas obstruents are frequently voiceless , sonorants are almost always voiced. In the sonority hierarchy , all sounds higher than fricatives are sonorants. They can therefore form the nucleus of a syllable in languages that place that distinction at that level of sonority; see Syllable for details. Sonorants contrast with obstruents , which do stop or cause turbulence in
112-467: Is the Burger Eydt Wendisch document, which was discovered in the city of Bautzen and dates to the year 1532. There are an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 speakers of Upper Sorbian. Almost all of these live in the state of Saxony , chiefly in the district of Bautzen (Budyšin). The stronghold of the language is the village of Crostwitz (Chrósćicy) and the surrounding municipalities, especially to
128-537: The Pacific Ocean (in Oceania , East Asia , and North and South America ) and in certain language families (such as Austronesian , Sino-Tibetan , Na-Dene and Eskimo–Aleut ). One European language with voiceless sonorants is Welsh . Its phonology contains a phonemic voiceless alveolar trill /r̥/ , along with three voiceless nasals: velar, alveolar and labial. Another European language with voiceless sonorants
144-545: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Upper Sorbian: (All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.) Sonorant In phonetics and phonology , a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract ; these are
160-457: The airflow. The latter group includes fricatives and stops (for example, /s/ and /t/ ). Among consonants pronounced in the back of the mouth or in the throat, the distinction between an approximant and a voiced fricative is so blurred that no language is known to contrast them. Thus, uvular , pharyngeal , and glottal fricatives never contrast with approximants. Voiceless sonorants are rare; they occur as phonemes in only about 5% of
176-516: The condition in many guilds of the cities of the area to accept only members of German-language origin. However, the central areas of the Milzener and Lusitzer , in the area of today's Lusatia , were relatively unaffected by the new German language settlements and legal restrictions. The language therefore flourished there. By the 17th century, the number of Sorbian speakers in that area grew to over 300,000. The oldest evidence of written Upper Sorbian
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#1732868727496192-458: The following sonorant consonantal phonemes: /l/, /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, /ɹ/, /w/, /j/ . Old Irish had one of the most complex sonorant systems recorded in linguistics, with 12 coronal sonorants alone. Coronal laterals , nasals , and rhotics had a fortis–lenis and a palatalization contrast: /N, n, Nʲ, nʲ, R, r, Rʲ, rʲ, L, l, Lʲ, lʲ/ . There were also /ŋ, ŋʲ, m/ and /mʲ/ , making 16 sonorant phonemes in total. Voiceless sonorants have
208-425: The manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels are sonorants, as are semivowels like [j] and [w] , nasal consonants like [m] and [n] , and liquid consonants like [l] and [r] . This set of sounds contrasts with the obstruents ( stops , affricates and fricatives ). For some authors, only the term resonant is used with this broader meaning, while sonorant
224-517: The town during the Seven Years' War . Strehla is also regarded as the point towards the end of World War II where troops of the Western Allies heading East first encountered Soviet troops heading West, at 11:30am on April 25, 1945, when Lieutenant Albert Kotzebue of the 69th Infantry Division (United States) encountered a Russian on horseback at nearby Leckwitz , later identified as a trooper of
240-562: The west of it. In this core area, Upper Sorbian remains the predominant vernacular. The vowel inventory of Upper Sorbian is exactly the same as that of Lower Sorbian . Upper Sorbian has both final devoicing and regressive voicing assimilation , both word-internal and across word boundaries. In the latter context, /x/ is voiced to [ ɣ ] . Regressive voicing assimilation does not occur before sonorants and /h/ . The Lord's Prayer in Upper Sorbian: Article 1 of
256-400: The world's languages. They tend to be extremely quiet and difficult to recognise, even for those people whose language has them. In every case of a voiceless sonorant occurring, there is a contrasting voiced sonorant. In other words, whenever a language contains a phoneme such as /ʍ/ , it also contains a corresponding voiced phoneme such as /w/ . Voiceless sonorants are most common around
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