View source for Polabian Language (pox)


<table valign=top>
  <tr>
    <td valign=top align=left width="50%">
     <table valign=top>
        <tr><td><b>Description:</b>

The Polabian language is an extinct West Slavic language that was spoken by the Slavs of North-Eastern Germany around the Elbe or Laba River (hence 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 18th centuries. As can be seen in the comparisons of the Lord's Prayer below, Polabian contained many German loanwords, such as Wader (Father) and Rîk (Kingdom).
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 a native speaker of Polabian (himself leaving only 13 pages of linguistically relevant material from a 310-page manuscript).<i>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.html?curid=150215 ..... full article at Wikipedia]</i></td></tr>
        <tr><td><h2>Location of Polabian Language Speakers</h2>
http://llmap.org/languages/pox/static_map.png?width=400&height=300&kilroywashere=.png
</td></tr>
        <tr><td></td></tr>
     </table>
    </td>
    <td valign=top align=right> 
     <table valign=top>
      <tr><td><table>

<h2>Overview</h2>

<tr><td><b>Main Country: </b></td><td>[http://www.freebase.com/view/en/germany Germany]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Spoken In: </b></td><td>

<b><i>Regions: </i></b>[http:///www.freebase.com/view/en/europe Europe] 
</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>ISO 639-3 Code: </b></td><td>pox</td></tr>

</table>
</td></tr>
      <tr><td><h2>Classification Taxonomy</h2>
[[All Languages]]

&nbsp;&nbsp;[[Indo-European Group]]

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;[[Slavic Group]]

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;[[West Slavic Group]]

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;[[Lechitic Group]]

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>[[Polabian Language]]</b>

</td></tr>
     </table>
    </td>
  </tr>
</table>

__NOTOC__