New Speakers in the City

Nowy Casnik, the Lower Sorbian weekly with headquarters in Cottbus, has published an article about Joanna, her fieldwork in Lower Lusatia and our project in the 49th issue (beginning of December 2020). You can see it here:

Liebe Freunde und Freundinnen der niedersorbischen Sprache, Wir führen gerade eine soziolinguistische Studie durch, womit wir die aktuelle Lage der niedersorbischen Sprache verstehen wollen. Wenn Sie Niedersorbisch sprechen, lernen, oder in der Niederlausitz leben, bitte füllen Sie das Formular aus (Link unten). Es ist eine einfache Möglichkeit, uns zu helfen, die Sprachgemeinschaft des Niedersorbischen besser zu verstehen und zur Aufrechterhaltung der niedersorbischen Sprache beizutragen! Pśijaśele a pśijaśelki dolnoserbskeje rěcy, Pśewjedujomy rowno sociolinguistisku studiju, z kótarejuž comy aktualnu situaciju dolnoserbskeje rěcy rozměś. Pšosym wupołniśo toś ten formular, gaž dolnoserbšćinu powědaśo, wuknjośo abo gaž bydliśo w Dolnej Łužycy. Jo to lažka móžnosć, nam pomagaś, aby rěcne zgromaźeństwo dolnoserbšćiny lěpjej rozměli a k zdźaržanju dolnoserbskeje rěcy pśipomagali! Deutsche Version des Fragebogens Dolnoserbska wersija napšašnika Vielen Dank! Źěkujomy se!  Michael Horn

Sorbian-oriented research is institutionally represented by the Serbski institut in Bautzen/Budyšin (Sorbian Institute) and the Institute for Sorbian Studies  (Institut für Sorabistik) at the University of Leipzig. The Sorbian Institute includes the Sorbian Central Library and the Sorbian culture archive. The institute cooperates with partners in Germany and with universities in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Russia. The institute also cooperates with the International Slavists Committee, the European Research Institute for Culture in Bonn and the European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages in Dublin (Mercator 2016: 48). “The Sorbian Institute edits Lětopis , a scientific journal that appears twice a year and additionally has special editions” (Mercator 2016: 19).  The main Sorbian scientific society is Maśica Serbska (spelled Maćica Serbska in Upper Sorbian), founded in Bautzen/Budyšin in 1847. With its 120 members in both Lower and Upper Lusatia, voluntarily active in scien

Following an intensive literature review process and the first fact-finding fieldwork in Lower Lusatia in July-August 2020, we have compiled the first project report that is now available for download here . The report offers a concise summary of the information on the Lower Sorbian language from the sociolinguistic perspective and on the ethnic group of Lower Sorbs living in the East of Germany to be found in various publications in English, German and Polish. Most of these texts (the most important being, among others, Glaser 2007 and Mercator 2016 in English, Marti 1990 and publications by Budarjowa, Elle, or Neumann in German, Dołowy-Rybińska 2012, 2014 and Lewaszkiewicz 2014 in Polish, as well as the publications within the framework of the SMiLE project) focus on both Lower and Upper Sorbs/Sorbian languages. In general, Upper Sorbian has received more scholarly attention and is better documented than Lower Sorbian. Although also endangered, Upper Sorbian is in a slightly better “

GIDS is a Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale framework developed by Joshua Fishman (1991). The framework includes eight stages 1-8, which should be read from the bottom up, assuming that stage 1 is the ideal be strived for and that revitalization of an endangered language usually starts at one of the lower stages:  1. Education, work sphere, mass media and government operations at higher and national levels; 2. Local/regional mass media and governance; 3. Local/regional work sphere; 4. Public schooling; 5. Schools for literacy acquisition, not in the public schooling system (incl. courses for adults); 6. Home-family-neighbourhood language use and transmission; 7. Cultural interaction in the given language involving primarily the older generations; 8. Language reconstruction and adult acquisition.  Except for a handful of committed language activists, Lower Sorbian does not have a closely-knit speech community. Young people, even if they learn it at school, can rarely hold a spon

WA Friday Lunch Talk ONLINE (MS Teams: WA Staff), May 29, 13:15-14:15, "Language revitalization without native speakers: Breton and Lower Sorbian" by dr Joanna Chojnicka & prof. Michael Hornsby Start: 2020-05-29 13:15 End: 2020-05-29 14:15 WA Friday Lunch Talks are monthly meetings with presentations of current research results or research in progress by WA faculty, staff, or PhD students. Each talk is of 45 minutes (+15 minutes for discussion). We welcome all to a talk ONLINE (MS Teams: WA Staff)  "Language revitalization without native speakers: Breton and Lower Sorbian" by dr Joanna Chojnicka & prof. Michael Hornsby from the Centre of Celtic Studies (Friday, May 29, 13:15-14:15). dr Joanna Chojnicka Centre for Celtic Studies & prof. Michael Hornsby Centre for Celtic Studies Language revitalization without native speakers: Breton and Lower Sorbian In this talk, we would like to present a new research project carried out at the Centre for Celtic Studies

The Centre for Celtic Studies and the Faculty of English hosted a seminar dedicated to Seachtain na Gaeilge on March 6th 2020. Seachtain na Gaeilge is an annual celebration of the Irish language that has been running since 1903 ( http://wa.amu.edu.pl/wa/node/11475 ). This year's event entitled Revitalising Minority Languages and Prior Ideological Clarification: The Case of Irish was opened by Dominic Berkeley, Second Secretary at the Embassy of Ireland and the Dean of the Faculty of English, Prof. Joanna Pawelczyk, and moderated by the head of the Centre for Celtic Studies as well as the PI of our project, Prof. Michael Hornsby. The following speakers presented during this year's event: Dr. Sara Brennan (Université de Lorraine) on Reviving, rebranding, reconnecting: The mobilization of Irish in business in post-crisis urban Ireland; Dr. Cassie Smith-Christmas (NUI Galway) on Inclusive Ireland: Using and Learning Irish as a Family; Prof. Tadhg Ó hIfearnáin (NUI Galway) on

On March 5th 2020 the first team meeting for our NCN-financed project took place. We are planning six team meetings in total over the period of three years, in March and September each year, in Poznań, Warsaw, Rennes and Cottbus. This first meeting was organized by Michael and Joanna in Poznań, with Nicole visiting from Warsaw and Jeanne from Rennes. Our first team meeting was devoted to getting to know each other, planning the project's working packages (WPs) in more detail, discussing the first article that we are going to write together, as well as planning conference participation for 2020. We were lucky enough to manage to meet right before the global epidemic of COVID-19 forced many countries to introduce drastic restrictions to travel and public life. Unfortunately, many of the conferences we were planning to participate in have already been cancelled or postponed, among them the Third Cultural Linguistics International Conference, Budapest, Hungary (June), the Tenth Cambr

The conference Language, Identity and Education in Multilingual Contexts took place at The Hague University of Applied Sciences on 20-21 February 2020. This conference was the third edition of the LIEMC (the first was held in Dublin in 2018 and the second in York in 2019), organized jointly by the Hague University of Applied Sciences, The Dutch Language Union – Taalunie and MultiLingNet. It was a relatively small event with three parallel sessions over two days and four keynote lectures given by: Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen on Family Language Policy: Does it Matter?, Tommaso M. Milani on Second Language Acquisition, Education and Social (In)Justice in a Multilingual Context, Roy Lyster on Research Perspectives on Integrating Language and Content, and Jos Beelen on From Mobility of the Few to Curriculum for All: Dutch Internationalization Anno 2020. With such a small crowd, everyone had the chance to talk to almost everyone else during coffee breaks, lunches and the conference

On February 20-21 Joanna is going to represent our team during the Language, Identity and Education in Multilingual Contexts (LIEMC2020) conference held at the Hague University of Applied Sciences. Our presentation is entitled Language Revitalization Without Native Speakers: Breton and Lower Sorbian and will take place on February 20 in the afternoon session (16:30-18:30). The full programme is available here and the conference website is accessible here . The Hague University of Applied Sciences https://liemc2020.wordpress.com/conference-venue/