The Maintenance of Lower Sorbian
The Maintenance of Lower Sorbian

Summary/Abstract: The Lower Sorbian language has coexisted with, and been under pressure from, German for several centuries. Together with strong prohibitions against Sorbian language use and various other harmful factors, everyday language contact has resulted in a continuing shift from Sorbian to German. The Sorbian population is concentrated in the states of Saxony and Brandenburg (both in eastern Germany) and enjoys the status of a national minority. Lower Sorbs make up a third of today’s estimated total of 60,000, but the number of individuals who can still be considered native speakers of Lower Sorbian is much lower (i.e. around 3,000). This means that the Lower Sorbian language is extremely threatened. Lower Sorbian activists have adopted a range of initiatives to maintain and revital-ise the language. Their strategies include intensive political lobbying work, organising cultural activities, resuming church services and developing new terminology (corpus development). However, the most important component of current revitalisation efforts is the establishment of the WITAJ ('Welcome') education programme. WITAJ was set up to enable children to acquire Lower Sorbian from the nursery stage all the way to university. The article will give you an overview of WITAJ’s work and achievements and of related language revitalisation initiatives as well.

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