Polabian language

The Polabian language, also known as Drevanian–Polabian language, Drevanian language, and Lüneburg Wendish language, is a West Slavic language that was spoken by the Polabian Slavs in present-day northeastern Germany around the Elbe, from which comes the term Polabian. It was spoken approximately until the rise to power of Prussia in the mid-18th century – when it was superseded by Low German – in the areas of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, central Mittelmark part of Brandenburg and eastern Saxony-Anhalt, as well as in eastern parts of Wendland. Polabian was also relatively long spoken in and around the cities of Lübeck and Oldenburg. The very poorly attested Slavic dialects of Rügen seemed to have had more in common with Polabian than with Pomeranian varieties. In the south, it bordered on the Sorbian language area in Lusatia.
Polabian is characterized by the preservation of a number of archaic features, such as the presence of nasal vowels, a lack of metathesis of Proto-Slavic *TorT; the presence of an aorist and imperfect verb tenses, traces of the dual number, and some prosodic features, as well as by some innovations, including diphthongization of closed vowels, a shift of the vowels o to ö, ü and a to o; a softening of the consonants g, k in some positions to d', t', an occasional reduction of final vowels, and the formation of complex tenses, many which are associated with the influence of the German language. Polabian also has a large number of Middle Low German borrowings.
By the 18th century, Lechitic Polabian was in some respects markedly different from other Slavic languages, most notably in having a strong German influence. It was close to Pomeranian and Kashubian, and is attested only in a handful of manuscripts, dictionaries and various writings from the 17th and 18th centuries.

History

About 2800 Polabian words are known; of prose writings, only a few prayers, one wedding song and a few folktales survive. Immediately before the language became extinct, several people started to collect phrases and 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. 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 by.
The language left many traces to this day in toponymy; for example, Wustrow, Lüchow, Sagard, Gartow, Krakow etc. It is also a likely origin of the name Berlin, from the Polabian stem berl-/birl-.
Though unorganized language revitalization for the Polabian language is occurring in small groups. As of 2023, the language has few limited speakers, but is growing due to more resources being accessible to learn the language.

Features

Polabian retains some archaic features from Proto-Slavic:

Preservation of the nasal vowels , , : *pętь > pąt
Preservation of the aorist and imperfect in the conjugation system
Trace preservation of the dual number
Absence of metathesis of *TorT

Polabian also has many innovations, in part due to neighboring German and in part due to being more remote:

Diphthongization of monophthongs
Formation of complex, periphrastic tenses
Restructuring of the case system

The Proto-Slavic vowels developed thusly:

Unlike most other Slavic languages, the weak yers ъ and ь were not lost not only before a syllable with another reduced yer, but also in initial stressed and pre-stressed syllables: *dъno > dånü “bottom” ", *sъpati > såpot "sleep", *tъkati > tåkat "weave", *tьma > tåmă "darkness", *pьsi > pasaɪ̯ "dogs". A. M. Selishchev notes similar phenomena in the dialects of the Bulgarian, Serbian, Slovenian and Slovak languages. In positions before a hard consonant, *ь in Polabian shifted to å, in other positions to a and only in some cases between soft consonants to i. *ъ usually gave å, but after velars it turned into ė.
Reduced vowels arose in Polabian as a result of stress. In stressed syllables, the vowels *a, *ě, *ъ, and *ь reduced to ă, and the vowels *i, *y, *u, *o, *e reduced to ĕ.
The vowel *o became ö before a hard consonant and å after v before a hard consonant, in ü in other positions.
The vowels *i, *y, and *u in Polabian were diphthongized in stressed and pre-stressed syllables: *zima > zai̯mă, *nitь > nai̯t, *byti > båi̯t, *dymъ > dåi̯m, *duša > daṷsă, *ubĕžati > ai̯bezăt, *jutrě > jaṷtră, jai̯tră.
In the same position, a became o : *žaba > zobo, *korva > korvo.
The vowel *ě before hard dental consonants turned into o with a softening of the preceding consonant, before j it turned into i, in other cases - into e.

The Proto-Slavic consonants developed thusly:

The sibilant consonants *č, *š, *ž in Polabian underwent masuration, changing into c, s, z, which, unlike the original c, s, z, were always hard. T. Lehr-Spławiński, based on relative chronological data, originally dated the appearance of masuration in the Polabian language no earlier than the beginning of the 16th century, and that this phenomenon must be a Polabian innovation, and it cannot be explained by the influence of the German language, which has č and š. A. M. Selishchev dated this process to the 16th-17th centuries, believing that it did not take place in all Polabian dialects, as a few documents have examples with these sibilants, despite the predominance of masurized forms, and associated it with the influence of the Low Saxon and East Low German dialects of German settlers, in which š is missing. Later it was proven that in the dialect presented in the Pfeffinger dictionary, masuration was absent and for it it is necessary to reconstruct sibilants, absent in other dialects.
The back-lingual consonants *k, *g, and *x before the front vowels i, ė ''ü and ö'' softened to ḱ, ǵ, x́. Subsequently, ḱ and ǵ became ť and ď respectively.
Phonology

For Polabian the following segments are reconstructable:

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close
Close-mid
Open-mid
Near-open
Open

Diphthongs

Consonants

Prosody

The nature of the Polabian accent remains a controversial issue. There are three theories:

Free stress, supported by A. Schleicher, T. Lehr-Spławiński, and A. M. Selishchev.
Stress was always initial, i.e. always occurring on the first syllable, supported by E. Kurilovich.
Final stress if the final vowel was long, and pentulimate stress if the final vowel was short, supported by N. S. Trubetskoy and R. Olesh. K. Polański criticizes this theory asserting that there was not long-short distinction in Polabian, but rather strong-weak.
Morphology

Due to the poor attestation of Polabian, it is difficult to reconstruct a full morphology. Presented here is a general overview.

Nouns

As in all Slavic languages, Polabian has three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. Polabian nouns may also be animate or inanimate, and decline for six cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental and the prepositional; the vocative case in Polabian was lost, being replaced by the nominative. Nouns were used mainly only in combination with prepositions, not only in the prepositional case, as in most Slavic languages, but also in the instrumental. Within the inflectional endings, two paradigms exist, one of a masculine-neuter type, the other a feminine type; neither inflectional types are homogeneous.

Masculine and neuter nouns

Masculine and neuter nouns are divided into two groups: those ending in -ă in the nominative singular and those ending in anything else. Nouns ending in -ă probably took a feminine declension in the singular, as in other Slavic languages, but this is difficult to assert due to the fact that such nouns are known in the documents only in the nominative singular form. The second group of nouns is divided into a number of subtypes. The dual forms of masculine and neuter nouns are not attested.
Within the singular, the following can be seen:

Masculine nouns in the nominative are characterized by zero endings: dåzd, in addition, forms with the ending -ă are preserved : l̥ol̥ă, vau̯jă, and one form with the ending -åi̯: komåi̯. In the neuter gender, there are groups of nouns with endings -ü: l̥otü, -i: püli , -ĕ: gńozdĕ and -ą/''-ă: jai̯mą/jai̯mă.
The masculine genitive singular endings are -o and -ă: bügo, zai̯våtă, -au̯/-åi̯ or -ĕ: sned'au̯, pelåi̯nĕ. The genitive singular neuter endings -o or -ă: pöl l̥oto, mlåkă, vai̯nă.
Masculine and neuter nouns in the dative case end in -au̯, -ai̯, and -ĕ: büd'au̯, kå bezońĕ. The first two endings differ by dialects, the third, unlike the first two, depends on the place of stress in the word. T. Ler-Splavinsky and some other scholars interpreted the endings -aw, -af, and -âw as the ending of the masculine dative case -åvĕ, the authors of modern works on the Polabian language are inclined to see the diphthong -au̯ in these endings.
Animate masculine nouns in the accusative are syncretic with the genitive case, and for inanimate masculine nouns and all neuter nouns, the accusative is syncretic with the nominative case.
Masculine and neuter nouns in the instrumental singularend in -åm: prid gordåm, prid l̥otåm.
Most masculine and neuter nouns in the locative singular end in -e or -ă: vå хlăde, vå vetră ||no decă, krig ||no kriʒe. Masculine nouns whose stems end in a soft consonant take the ending -ĕ: no pǫt'ĕ, no våtåi̯ńĕ. A number of neuter nouns are characterized by the ending -ai̯: no mărai̯, vå pülai̯.

Within the plural, the following can be seen:

Nouns in the nominative plural are characterized by a wide variety of endings: -ai̯/-ĕ, -e, -üvĕ, -i, -åi̯/-ĕ, and -ă - lesai̯, ṕåsĕ/pasai̯, nüze, polcă. Since the nominative and accusative plural are syncretic, it is sometimes difficult or impossible to tell which case is attested in texts.
The masculine genitive plural is characterized by endings -Ø and -üv: ai̯ dåvüх gråi̯k, cai̯stĕ priz grех́üv. Neuter nouns only take the ending -Ø.
Only one example of the dative plural of masculine nouns is attested, formed with the ending -üm: gresnărüm''.