Talk:Sorbian languages

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This page needs lots - I'm not sure that the comment that Sorbian is a throwback to a proto-Slavic language is correct.

This actually needs to explain the two languages/dialects, numbers of speakers etc.

Maybe we need a page on west slavic languages as well. Secretlondon 20:23, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I think this needs the alphabet too - and I will move to sorbian languages as they clearly believe that there are two not one. They also have different ISO codes. Secretlondon 20:34, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Both alphabets are at Slovenian page, Upper Sorbian first, followed by Lower Sorbian.

How does Częstochowa relate to the Sorbian languages?

It doesn't. I think someone was confused by the fact that Częstochowa has "a Lusatian culture excavation site", but the relevant meaning of "Lusatian culture" has nothing to do with Sorbian. I'm deleting the link. --Angr 23:40, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

BTW, Częstochowa is a typical Polish word (it may have not been a long long time ago) and if you braek it down to "często chowa" that would mean "often hides".

[edit] Relationship

Are the Sorbian languages closer to Polish or Czech? Meursault2004 09:47, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

It's always difficult to quantify the "closeness" of one language to another. They share some similarities with Polish (e.g. vocalization of the velarized L to [w]) and some similarities with Czech (e.g. loss of nasalized vowels). In at least one respect, the treatment of Proto-Slavic g, Lower Sorbian is more like Polish (it stays g) while Upper Sorbian is more like Czech (it becomes h). --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 12:56, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

As far as I know Polish has some words for which dual forms exist, especially when they occur naturally in pairs such as eye, hand, etc. Tsschmidt 19:28, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that's not too uncommon. What is uncommon among modern Indo-European languages is to have a productive dual for all count nouns, like Sorbian does. Even things that don't necessarily appear in pairs like cats or lamps take the dual in Sorbian if you're referring to two of them. --Angr (tɔk) 19:48, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Also Slovak and Czech has some dual remnants (Czech has more of it). However, out of Slavic languages, only Sorbians and Slovene have real productive dual. rado 18:10, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Kamil - May 2006: That's misunderstanding. I'm Polish and there are no dual forms in Polish. In many languages there are words relating to "dualism" like "both, either" in English or "oba, oboje, obydwa" etc in Polish, but by dual you mean a gramatical form of a word, not an additional word (like "both") which leaves no doubts that we talk about 2 things, not 3 or 87, without specifying the number. My father talked to some Sorbians and said it was relatively easy to communicate, but these are two different languages. Also Ukrainan is similar to Polish, but Russian is not, athough it has quite many similarities.

[edit] Confusing statement?

"Both languages have dual grammatical number; they are among the very few living Indo-European languages to retain this feature (the other being Slovenian)." <--That's a quote from the article; the part in parentheses seems to imply that there are only two Indo-European languages which "retain this feature." So which is it? "Very few" or two? Yes, I admit two qualifies as very few, but it's kind of a weird way to put it if there are in fact just two. If it's 3 or 4 or something, replace "the other" with "another." Somebody with more knowledge, please straighten that out. Foxmulder 02:06, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

There are three languages that retain the dual: Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian, and Slovenian. Thus the Sorbian languages are among the very few (namely three) IE languages that retain the dual; the other (i.e. the third) is Slovenian. Angr (talk) 06:03, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sorbian Wikipedias

There is a bug report at Bugzilla requesting the creation of Wikipedias for Lower Sorbian (dsb:) and Upper Sorbian (hsb:). If anyone else is interested in seeing these Wikipedias created, please log on to Bugzilla and vote for the bug. User:Angr 10:55, 20 June 2006 (UTC)