| Description:
The Polabian language is an extinct West Slavic language that was spoken by the Slavs of North-Eastern Germany around the river Laba (whence the name). It was spoken approximately until the mid-18th century, when it was suppressed by German, in the areas of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, eastern parts of Lower Saxony, and Schleswig-Holstein.
Polabian was in some respects markedly different from other Slavic languages. It was close to Pomeranian and Kashubian, and attested only in a handful of manuscripts dictionaries and various writings from the 17th and the 18th century.
About 2800 Polabian words are known (but of prosaic writings, only a few prayers, one wedding song and a few folktales). Immediately before the language went extinct several people started to collect phrases, compile wordlists and were engaged with folklore of the Polabian Slavs, but only one of them appears to have been native speaker of Polabian (himself leaving only 13 pages of linguistically relevant material from a 310-page manuscript). The last native speaker of Polabian, a woman, died in 1756, and the last person who spoke limited Polabian died in 1825.
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Location of Polabian Language Speakers
<googlemap zoom="1" width=400 height=300 lat="52.000000" lon="9.000000" type="map">
53.000000, 9.000000, Europe
51.000000, 9.000000, Germany</googlemap>
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