Luzhitsky language (Serbluzhitsky language) - history and interesting facts

Among the West Slavic dialects is the Luzicki language, spoken by less than 100 thousand people. You won’t take it to the number of popular ones, while every year there are fewer and fewer speakers, but the linguistic system has retained several features that distinguish it from other Slavic dialects and make it interesting to study.

Description and geography of distribution

Where do they speak Luzhitsky language? To explain it, use the so-called Luzhic people living in Germany, the Luzhik Serbs. This is one of the few nations of the state that professes the Lutheran or Catholic faith. Interestingly, these Slavs speak two languages ​​- native and German.

That is why a characteristic feature of the Luga language is a large number of Germanisms - borrowings from German vocabulary.

The language also has some features:

• Dual.
• The adjective does not have a short form.

Now the language has 34 letters, some of which are used exclusively in their own names, as well as foreign borrowings.

The talk

Luzhitsky language has two types of dialects - upper and lower Luzhitsky, they are similar, but a number of differences can be distinguished:

• Phonetic system: some sounds are pronounced differently depending on the dialect.
• Vocabulary. Both dialects have unique words, however, native speakers will not experience serious difficulties in understanding each other.
• In morphology. So, exclusively Lower Luzhsk dialects possess verbal forms of aorist and imperfect, only Upper Luzhsky dialects have a supine - a special verbal noun.

The appearance of two dialects is due to the fact that previously there were two independent Serbluzhitsky dialects, which were used by residents of various regions. However, not all researchers adhere to this position, some linguists believe that the language has always been single, but because of various features it had a clearly expressed disunity. So, the Upper Sorbian dialect is characteristic of the Serbs living in Budyshyn and areas west of this city. The dialect itself is heterogeneous and includes several dialects:

• Western Catholic
• Budishinsky;
• Kulovsky;
• Golan;
• Eastern Golan.

The Lower Luzhitsky dialect is common in the city of Khoshebuz and its environs. It is spoken by no more than 8 thousand people, and most of the carriers are already elderly. There are several dialects:

• Hoshebuz
• northwestern;
• northeastern;
• a specific dialect of the village of Rogov.

Transitional dialects between the Upper and Lower Luzhitsky can be heard in some settlements.

History of language development

This Slavic language developed on the basis of tribal dialects of the northwestern Slavs, therefore, in its system there are a lot of Slavic features in phonetics. Beginning in the 13th century, the Lusatian peasants were constantly subjected to the oppression of German feudal lords, who tried to impose not only their religion, but also speech. That is why the Lusatian language is rich in German borrowings. But, despite the pressure, the Serbs managed to create their own written language, which appeared on the basis of Latin in the 16th century. Then the Bible was translated into this Slavic language, books were first printed. In the middle of the 16th century, there was a clear division of the language into two dialects, two literary dialects formed.

The first grammars appeared in the 17th century: in 1640 - Lower Luzhitskaya, in 1679 - Upper Luzhitsky. The Latin-Serboluzhitsky dictionary saw the light in the 20s of the 18th century. Later, printed works of art appeared in the Puddle language. Despite the fact that native Serbs lived in German territory, they managed to preserve their unique speech. That is why the question “in which state they speak the Puddle language” can give a very definite answer - in Germany, but in the area of ​​the country where the Slavs live - Serbs.

The current state of the language

Luzhitsky language has a very limited scope and therefore many researchers suggest that it will gradually become obsolete, and the only German language will reign on the territory of Luzhitsa. Let’s figure out who speaks the Puddle language and in what situations. First of all, this adverb is used in communication between family members, while German is used in business. Divine services are also held at Serboluzhitsky, individual subjects are taught as part of the school course. But modern youth is losing interest in their native dialect, the language is not very popular, so its speakers are becoming less and less every year.

Phonetic features

Having considered in what country they speak the Puddle language, we turn to the description of its characteristic features.

There are 7 vowels, while there is one phoneme of lower rise, two middle-upper and middle lower, three phonemes of upper rise. Two vowels are similar in sound to diphthongs. There are 27 consonants in the language, they differ in the way and place of education, they can either have a soft sound option or do without it. In the table, we present a comparison of the system of consonant phonemes of Luzitsky and a number of other Slavic languages.

Differences between Polish, Czech, Slovak, Puddle language can be seen already at the level of phonetics. So, in Polish vowels 6, in Czech there are 9, they differ in sound length. And unlike Slovak phonetics in Ludza, diphthongs are not peculiar, some vowels differ only in their tendency to diphthongization. Explosive aspirational from the listed Slavic languages ​​is inherent only to Luditsky. Another difference in the phonetic structure of the Lugouse language is in the absence of dental consonants and the presence of postalveolar sounds.

Stress

The Luzhitsky dialect is characterized by expiratory, stress, when the stressed syllable is characterized by the application of a certain muscular effort to pronounce it. Most often the first syllable of a word is under stress. This language is similar to Czech and Slovak. In Polish, it almost always falls on the penultimate syllable.

Features of morphology and syntax

There are several features of the grammatical structure of the language:

• The presence of 10 parts of speech: three names, a pronoun, a verb, an adverb and official (preposition, union, particle), interjection.
• The noun has the categories of gender (there are three of them: masculine, middle and feminine), numbers (singular, plural, dual), case (6 of them, as in Russian, there is also a vocal form) of personality and animation.
• Adjectives belong to one of three categories (qualitative, relative and possessive), can form degrees, but do not have a short form.
• Verb forms are diverse, there are several past tenses.
• The following peculiarity can be noted in the construction of sentences: the members of the sentence are arranged in the order “subject - addition - predicate”. For example, in Russian, a sentence would be formulated as follows: "Grandma strokes a cat."

Luzhitsky language is a unique grammatical phenomenon in which features of the Slavic language and German borrowings are intertwined. In some ways, it looks like Czech, Polish, even Russian, but still remains original.