The Wendish Research Exchange - Bartels, Hauke: Loan Words in Lower Sorbian. Results from an International Research Project

Lětopis Abstract 2009 1: Bartels, Hauke: Loan Words in Lower Sorbian. Results from an International Research Project

In the context of a comparative international research project on loan words (“Loan Word Typology”) the stock of indigenous and borrowed equivalents was also established in Lower Sorbian using 1,460 terms as a basis. The proportion of loan words established in the section of the Lower Sorbian vocabulary examined is calculated as 22.4 %. The largest part of this (18.7 % of the vocabulary) comes from German – a result which is not surprising given the longstanding linguistic contact between Lower Sorbian and German. The second most important donor is Upper Sorbian, from which words were increasingly adopted particularly from the middle of the 19th century, above all out of purist motives, i.e. with the aim of displacing German loan words. This piece provides, amongst other things, a survey of different historical contact situations and of the very different proportions of loan words in different semantic fields. It describes the distinctive features of the Lower Sorbian vocabulary which are a result of the competition between the two most important donor languages, German and Upper Sorbian.