Polabian language

The Polabian language is an extinct West Slavic language that was spoken by the Slavs of North-Eastern Germany around the Elbe or Labe River (hence the name). It was spoken approximately until the mid-18th century, when it was superseded by German, in the areas of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, eastern parts of Lower Saxony, and Schleswig-Holstein.

Polabian was in some respects markedly different from other Slavic languages. It was close to Pomeranian and Kashubian, and attested only in a handful of manuscripts, dictionaries and various writings from the 17th and 18th centuries. As can be seen in the comparisons of the Lord's Prayer below, Polabian contained many German loanwords, such as Wader (Father) and Rîk (Kingdom).

About 2800 Polabian words are known (but of prosaic writings, only a few prayers, one wedding song and a few folktales). Immediately before the language went extinct several people started to collect phrases, 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.

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

The language left some traces to this day in toponymy; for example, Wustrow "Place on the island", Lüchow (Polabian: Ljauchüw), Sagard, Gartow etc.

Grammar

Phonology

For Polabian the following segments are reconstructable:^[2]

Morphology

Syntax

Lexis

Dialects

Example of Polabian

The Lord's Prayer in Polabian and related Lechitic languages is:^[3]

Notes

References

• Olesch, Reinhold (1977), "Jezik polapskih Drevana: Stanje i zadaci istraživanja" (in Croatian) (PDF), Suvremena lingvistika (Zagreb) 15, http://suvlin.ffzg.hr/index.php/suvlin/article/view/387/298 

• Kapović, Mate (2008) (in Croatian), Uvod u indoeuropsku lingvistiku, Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, ISBN 978-953-150-847-6 

• Rzetelska-Feleszko, Ewa (2002), "Polabisch" (in German) (PDF), Enzyklopädie des Europäischen Ostens, Klagenfurt, http://www.uni-klu.ac.at/eeo/Polabisch.pdf 

• Polański, Kazimierz (1993), "Polabian", in Bernard Comrie and Greville G. Corbett, The Slavonic languages, London & New York: Routledge, ISBN 978-0415280785 

• Słownik etymologiczny języka Drzewian połabskich, Part 1: ed. Tadeusz Lehr-Spławiński & Kazimierz Polański, Wrocław, 1962, from Part 2 on: ed. K. Polański, Wrocław, 1971-

• Kazimierz Polański & Janusz Sehnert: Polabian-English Dictionary. The Hague: Mouton 1967

See also

• Wends

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