#sorbian language

[mapsontheweb]

Map showing location of Sorbian speakers now and then

[koraktor]

Speaking of "Krabat merch", this beautiful print from @siggiko-kunst (insta: Siggiko) arrived and the quality is amazing 🐺

I also really appreciate the small wolf illustration they included.

Go support the artist :)

[renegade-hierophant]

Lexical distances between Slavic languages

The numbers represent the percentage of vocabulary that's different.

So for example Russian is more similar to Bulgarian because it borrowed a lot of Old Church Slavonic words, since OCS is basically the literary form of the old Bulgarian dialect of Common Slavic.

Ukrainian on the other hand is more similar to Polish and Slovak than to Russian, because Ukrainians preserved their own native East Slavic vocabulary, while Polish is different from Russian in more than half of its vocabulary.

[ratuszarsenal]

see the problem is that I would love to learn tatar (cyrilic) or crimean tatar (latin script) but the only course tailored to and made by the polish tatar community is in fucking białystok..... miss me with that!

[ukulelegodparent]

I love Swedish so much it's such a joke language. Like all the Scandinavian languages are joke languages but Swedish is on another level.

[itsagrummel]

the etmythology of "Kantorka" is really funny.

the word comes from the latin 'cantare' which means 'to sing' and became 'Kantor' in german as the first singer. Now sorbian is a slavic language so the grammatical feminine gender get's added with the 'ka' ending. this leads to finally the word Kantorka - the first female singer.

Essentially this word traveled around the same many other mix language words travel around nowadays in the same region with funny creations like 'telefonierawat', 'dai Termin' or just the linear syntax translations like 'WAS DAS!?'.

[muka-rapak]

Just watched a short documentary about the Sorbs/Wendish, maybe give it a watch! 🤍❤️💙

But Muka, why are you posting about Sorbs on your Krabat blog? Krabat is a sorbian legend!

[prekladatelsky-orisek]

Witajće! Rěkam Tony, sym z Ameriki, a wuknu serbsce. Moja mać dźěła jako přełožowarka a mój nan je na wuměnku. Ja sym na uniwersiće studował, ale nětko hižo njejsym student. Wuknu serbsce tehodla, zo je to rjana mowa ze zajimawu kulturu :D

Disclaimer: I am learning and definitely making mistakes! Would love corrections if anyone has some!

[songs-of-the-east]

The Smallest Slavic Nation

Lusatian Sorbs were able to keep their language and cultural traditions, despite of the centuries under the German rules and without their own statehood. At the present time, these Western Slavic people inhabit just few villages along the German-Polish border in Eastern Germany. The Lusatian lands are split now between two German states, Brandenburg and Saxony. The Saxon part is called Upper Lusatia. Its inhabitants speak the Upper Sorbian language, very similar to the Czech language. The part belonged to Brandenburg is called Lower Lusatia. The local Slavic minority speaks the Lower Sorbian language, more similar to the Polish language. - Vladimir Pomortzeff

[salvadorbonaparte]

Languages I already know to some level (although you never stop learning): German, English, Spanish

Languages I (want to) focus on at the moment: Yiddish, Romanian, Croatian

Languages I want to learn or dabble in in the near future: Portuguese, French, Catalan, Korean, Hindi, (American) Sign Language, Hebrew, Tigrinya, Low German, Turkish

Languages I'd like to learn or dabble in in the future: Japanese, Malaysian, Vietnamese, Khmer, Italian, Arabic, Russian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Czech, Greek, Dutch, Guaraní, Zulu, Swahili, Sorbian, Welsh, Bengali, Galician, Tagalog, Punjabi, Farsi, Cantonese, Georgian, Armenian, Kazakh, Albanian

Order and number of languages subject to change. I also do not intend to be fluent in all of these languages, many of them I'd be content to have a conversational level or reading knowledge

[movietonight]

is there any specific language you want to learn in order for conservation and preservation

Low German and Sorbian. Both are minority languages I have some sort of family connection to and if I do end up living in Germany I think it would be nice to live somewhere where I would be able to use them in daily life or at least be able to translate into or out of them?

I think languages are very important for cultural preservation, but just learning some endangered language is not going to "save" it unless you actually, like, use it, which is very difficult unless you are in a community that uses the language

[mapsontheweb]

Understandability between Polish and other Slavic languages

by NRohirrim

Understandability of Polish with other Slavic languages

Polish language - red:

virtually every citizen of Poland living in Poland knows it

Těšín / Cieszyn area in Czech Republic bordering with Poland

few villages in North-Western Slovakia (although there language is somewhere inbetween Polish and Slovakian)

South-Eastern Lithuania and North-Western Belarus (with Belarusian language influence)

2 dots for major Polish minorities (outside of historical habitat) in London and Berlin

Mutually Intelligible (how many sentences out of 100 you can totally understand when spoken with normal pace) - orange:

Kashubian - 98% (few counties of Northern Poland, inside Pomeranian Voivodeship)

Sorbian (Lusatian) - 97% - few municipalities in Eastern Saxony and South-Eastern Brandenburg

Silesian dialect of Czech language - 96% (Moravian-Silesian Region of North-Eastern Czechia)

Slovakian language - from 96% in the north-east of Slovakia to 95% in the south-west of Slovakia

Ukrainian language - 96% in the western quarter of Ukraine to 94% in the rest of Ukraine

Belarusian language (only some parts of Western Belarus and few municipalities in Podlaskie Voivodeship) - 95%

Understandability of other Slavic languages (how many sentences out of 100 you can pretty much understand when spoken slowly), green:

Czech Republic - 92% in the eastern part (Moravia), 90% in the western part (Bohemia)

Belarusian dialect of Russian (most of Belarus) - 90%

Russian used in Ukraine - 87-88%

Russian used in Moldova - 87%

standard Russian 85%

Slovenia 85%

North Macedonia 82%

rest of former Yugoslavia - 85% in the north-west (Zagreb) to 82% in the south-east (Niš)

Bulgaria 80%

Also included on the map dialects of Polish:

yellow - Kociewie dialect - with visible Kashubian connotations spoken in the southern part of Pomeranian Voivodeship and most nothern part Kuyavian–Pomeranian; descendant of Greater Polish dialect now replaced with standard Polish

light blue - Kurpie dialect - in the north-eastern part of Masovian Voivodeship bordering with Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship (rest of Masovian dialect is mostly replaced with standard Polish)

dark blue - Poddlachian dialect - once far dialect of Masovian dialect, now sort of became dialect of its own in Podlaskie Voivodeship (rest of Masovian dialect is mostly replaced with standard Polish). Polish spoken in Belarus and Lithuania is similar to it.

brown - Poznań dialect in the area of the capital of Greater Poland Voivodeship

purple - Silesian dialect - only one of the historically large Polish language dialects yet not fully replaced by standard Polish - spoken from 20 to 60% in Opolskie Voivodeship and south-western half of Silesian Voivodeship. Polish spoken in Těšín / Cieszyn area of Czech Republic is similar to it.

pink - Góral (Highlander) dialect - surviving Lesser Polish dialect with influences from Slovak language. In the mountains of southern part of Lesser Poland Voivodeship and south-eastern quarter of Silesian Voivodeship. Polish spoken in few Slovakian villages bordering with Poland is similar to it, but with influences of Slovakian that sometimes is hard to make a difference is it still Polish or already Slovakian.

[countriesgame]

Please reblog for a bigger sample size!

If you have any fun fact about Lusatia, please tell us and I'll reblog it!

Be respectful in your comments. You can criticize a government without offending its people.

Info: Lusatia is not a country. The blog is open to non-country polls now. In this case, it refers to a region in Germany and Poland.

[renegade-hierophant]

The word “Slavs” in the Slavic languages

Old Church Slavonic: Словѣне (Slověne)

Ukrainian: Слов’яни (Slovjany)

Slovak: Slovania

Czech: Slované

Polish: Słowianie

Kashubian: Słowiónie

Silesian, Lower Sorbian: Słowjany

Upper Sorbian: Słowjenjo

Slovene: Slovani

Serbian, Macedonian: Словени (Sloveni)

Montenegrin: Словјени (Slovjeni)

In these languages the pronunciation of the root has shifted from /o/ to /a/:

Russian, Belarusian, Rusyn: Славяне (Slavjane)

Bulgarian: Славяни (Slavjani)

Croatian, Bosnian: Slaveni

[aro-langblr]

Insight into Polish (/ˈpəʊlɪʃ/)

[Image description: A photo of Kraków's Main Square at night in Poland. Source: Mark Willemse.]

What is the language called in English and the language itself? - It is called Polish in English and polski [ˈpɔlskʲi] in the language itself. It has 4 generally recognized dialects: Greater Polish, Lesser Polish, Masovian, Silesian. The basis for Standard Polish is the Greater Polish dialect.

Where is the language spoken? - It is spoken in Poland as a national language, and it is a recognized minority language in Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Belarus, Slovakia, Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Romania. It's also a common diaspora language around the world.

How many people speak the language? - There are roughly 40 million speakers of Polish, and about 10% of speakers use it as a second language.

Which language family does it belong to? What are some of its relative languages? - Polish is classified as Indo-European > Balto-Slavic > Slavic > West Slavic > Lechitic > Polish. It’s closest relative language is Kashubian, which is the only other living langauge in the Lechitic branch. It's also decently close to Czech, Slovak, and Sorbian.

What writing system does the language use? - Polish is written in a modified Latin script with the added letters ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź, and ż. - Sample text, courtesy of omniglot: "Wszyscy ludzie rodzą się wolni i równi w swojej godności i prawach. Są obdarzeni rozumem i sumieniem i powinni postępować wobec siebie w duchu braterstwa."

What kind of grammatical features does the language have? - It is a fusional language with relatively free word order, though sentence structure tends towards SVO. It is a pro-drop language with no articles and adjectives preceeding nouns. Polish has 2 numbers, 3 persons, 3** genders, and 7 cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative, and vocative). It also has 2 voices (active and passive), 2 aspects (perfect and imperfect) and 3 moods (indicative, subjunctive, and imperative), and 3 tenses (present, past, future). However, the future tense of perfective verbs is conjugated the same as the present tense of imperfective verbs. Polish also has conjunctions and a formal second person. ** Masculine nouns are subdivided into 3 categories: personal, animate, and inanimate. (Which is so interesting! I don't think I've seen animacy manifest like this before.) ** Unrelated interesting note: Polish used to have a dual number, but it has fallen out of use and is now only found in archaisms.

How to identify the language? - The letter "ż" is almost exclusive to Polish. This language also frequents letters towards the end of the alphabet (namely u, w, y, and z). Standalone "w" and "z" as prepositions, means you're likely reading Polish. It's pretty easily identifiable once you get used to it.

What does the language sound like?

What do you personally find interesting about the language? - If you've followed me for long time, you know that I call Polish "the language I'd speak fluently in another timeline." Years back, I was super close to moving in with a Polish couple that were family friends, but I decided to go to community college in my current state instead. Had I chosen to go to a different college, I could very well have become fluent haha. But yeah, because of my mother's friend, who I spent a lot of time near in my childhood, I have an especially strong appreciation for Polish, and I hope you do, too!

[axl-ul]

Names Meaning Tag

Thanks a lot to lovely @shellyscribbles <33

Rules: List the meanings of your OCs’ names.

I haven't created an intro post for everyone but for the sake of doing this tag properly (and also, I really enjoy researching the suitable names for my original characters and then talking for eons about them, hehe).

BTW, I will not include characters such as Wukong or Loki since 1) I haven't created them, they're based on/inspired by/alternative versions of already existing deities and folklore legends and 2) meaning of their names has already been explained or is still being speculated on (and you can research this in the libraries or on the Internet).

I'm including (open) tags right here in case somebody wants to avoid some spoilers which will be featured at the end of the post. So, here are my lovelies <33 (+ anyone who wants to join in - as I said, the tags are open^^): @toribookworm22 @dogmomwrites @faelanvance @frogqueenofmirkwood @aalinaaaaaa @aohendo @verba-writing @vanessaroades-author @emberlyric @toribookworm22 @arijensineink

I also include the animal companions and minor/side characters who play quite an important roles in short stories. Here we go:

Ulfrika - from the Old Norse 'úflr' = 'a wolf'

Márgerdra - from the Old Norse 'marr' ( 1) 'a sea', 'a ocean', 'a lake', 2) 'a horse') and 'garðr' ('enclosure', 'protection'), it was also a name of a giantess/sorceress in the saga of Hjálmþér and Olvir

Kogar - no meaning, a made up word, I went with a sound that seemed the most cool to me

Udra - from Lithuanian 'ūdra' = 'an otter'

Lešij - a name of a Slavic forest demon/entity, = 'a leshy'

Meluzína - from the Slovak 'meluzína' = 'a howling/wailing wind'

Krabat - a name of a Sorbian folk hero, there's also a novel version of Krabat where a boy of the same name becomes a disciple of a warlock and is capable of transforming into a raven

Tiru - a made up name, no meaning, though a name of a real doggo inspired it

The Merchant - well, that's it, he's literally a merchant. Or is he?

Faust - a name of an alchemist Johann Georg Faust who's (in)famous for making a deal with the Devil thus selling his soul

Ivan - a name common in Slavic languages (I've heard some people translate it as 'John' but it's not the same name, though the ethymology is quite similar => comes from the greek Ioannes)

Zmej Milošovič - zmej/zmij (English version 'zmei') is a type of a Slavic dragon/snake (or a hybrid of those two, depends on the story), Milošovič can be used either as a surname (not at all that common), but it can also be translated as 'a son of Miloš (Milosh)'

Barbora - a Slovak, Czech and Lithuanian version of Barbara, named after a witch who was said to ride a hellish dog (literal Satan) at midnight

Kmotra - from a Slovak 'kmotra' = 'godmother', a nickname for Death Ulfrika gave her when she was a child

Krcho - from a Czech word 'krchov' = 'churchyard, graveyard'

!!!SPOILER PART!!!

Ruta - Ulfrika's second/real name given to her by Kogar when he took her under his protection, from a Slovak, Czech, Lithuanian (also other languages) word for 'rue'