Lower Sorbian is a West Slavic minority language spoken in eastern Germany in the historical province of Lower Lusatia, today part of Brandenburg. Standard Lower Sorbian is one of the two literary Sorbian languages, the other being the more widely spoken Upper Sorbian. The Lower Sorbian literary standard was developed in the 18th century, based on a southern form of the Cottbus dialect. The standard variety of Lower Sorbian has received structural influence from Upper Sorbian. Lower Sorbian is spoken in and around the city of Cottbus in Brandenburg. Signs in this region are typically bilingual, and Cottbus has a Lower Sorbian Gymnasium where one language of instruction is Lower Sorbian. It is a heavily endangered language. Most native speakers today belong to the older generations.

Phonology

The phonology of Lower Sorbian has been greatly influenced by contact with German, especially in Cottbus and larger towns. For example, German-influenced pronunciation tends to have a voiced uvular fricative instead of the alveolar trill. In villages and rural areas, German influence is less marked, and the pronunciation is more "typically Slavic".

Consonants

Final devoicing and assimilation

Lower Sorbian has both final devoicing and regressive voicing assimilation: The hard postalveolar fricative is assimilated to before :

Vowels

The vowel inventory of Lower Sorbian is exactly the same as that of Upper Sorbian. It is also very similar to the vowel inventory of Slovene.

Stress

Stress in Lower Sorbian normally falls on the first syllable of the word: In loanwords, stress may fall on any of the last three syllables: Most one-syllable prepositions attract the stress to themselves when they precede a noun or pronoun of one or two syllables: However, nouns of three or more syllables retain their stress:

Orthography

The Sorbian alphabet is based on the Latin script but uses diacritics such as the acute accent and caron.

Sample

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Lower Sorbian: Wšykne luźe su lichotne roźone a jadnake po dostojnosći a pšawach. Woni maju rozym a wědobnosć a maju ze sobu w duchu bratšojstwa wobchadaś. (All people are born free and equal in their dignity and rights. They are given reason and conscience and they shall create their relationships to one another according to the spirit of brotherhood.)

Dictionaries

Czech-Lower Sorbian and Lower Sorbian-Czech

German–Lower Sorbian

Lower Sorbian–German