The meaning of the basic term for the colour black in Czech, Polish and Upper Sorbian

In European culture the colour black has quite a diverse and complex symbolism, which is also confirmed in the phrases containing black and referring to human life and the surrounding nature. This article is a comparative analysis of the meanings (figurative and literal) and connotations of the term “black” in three genetically close languages: Czech, Polish and Upper Sorbian. The comparative approach has brought out both the similarities in the conceptualization of this colour and its connotations, which are typical for two languages or only one. The semantic connotations of black in the analysed languages confirm their high compliance, which results from the linguistic and cultural proximity. The differences relate primarily to the wealth of expressions that implement the appropriate connotations. There is a visible lack of symmetry between Czech and Polish on the one hand, and Upper Sorbian on the other. In Upper Sorbian, as a minority language, one can also notice the influence of the German language (clichés of German expressions), which results from the closeness of Upper Sorbian with German

The language of students at the Sorbian Seminary in Prague and the Prague Serbowka

The Sorbian Seminary came into being in Prague at the beginning of the 18th century to educate Catholic clergymen. In 1846, the students at the Seminary founded the Serbowka association and began to keep journals as well as produce the handwritten Kwětki almanac. These two sources were used as the basis for an analysis of the language – to be more precise, of the lexicon – used by the members of the association. Pful’s dictionary, published in 1866, served as a point of reference for an analysis of the data collected. The juxtaposition of the language material gathered in the study enables us to observe a great degree of conformity between the lexis used by the Serbowka members and the vocabulary recorded by Pful. What is more, in the yearbooks of the Serbowka and in Pful’s dictionary we can notice a large proportion of loanwords from the Czech language, both older and more recent. This is connected with the attitude at that time towards the renascent language. In the lexicon of the Serbowka members the proportion of bohemisms (or interference from the Czech language) is much greater, which is a result of direct and close contact with the Czech language

Sorb self-stereotypes of the Sorb in Upper Sorbian proverbs

National stereotypes, as with any stereotype, are a simplified representation of the external world. These simplified images find their reflection and are preserved in the language, in words, metaphors, proverbs, and phraseology. In Upper Sorbian paremiology a self-stereotype of the Sorb is found, a man who primarily sees himself in a positive light, as good, honest, devoted and faithful. A "true" Sorb is also hospitable and pious. The most important component of the sense of identity is, however, the linguistic distinctiveness, which is stressed in the proverbs and expressions. The self-evaluation is formulated against a clear stereotype of the German, who is treated as a "foreigner", as well as a symbol of oppression. This stems from the common history and the co-existence of the two nations. However, the image of the German emerging from the Upper Sorbian proverbs is not exclusively negative. There is no ethnocentrism in the Sorbs’ self-stereotype as, despite stressing their own positive traits, they are objective and have a critical attitude towards their own vices. A clearly negative feature of the Sorbs, which appears regularly in the collected material, is the imitation of German customs. In order to describe such representatives of the Sorbian nation a pejorative ethnonym Němpula is used

Niemieckie objaśnienia nawiasowe w prasie górnołużyckiej

The extraction of Upper Sorbian vocabulary with German glosses in parentheses allowed researchers to collect, in a short time, rich lexical material for study and to conduct statistical analyses, which, to some extent, helped to evaluate the role of the Upper Lusatian press in the development of the lexis of this language. The vocabulary extracted from the daily newspaper Serbske Nowiny (the issues of 2011) proved to be very interesting semantically. This collection of words illustrates the development of the Upper Sorbian lexis and reflects thesocial and economic changes which have taken place in recent years. The words explained in parentheses were poorly known or new

Między piekłem a niebem – językowy obraz wiary w górnołużyckich przysłowiach.

Proverbs express the opinions of the populace on life and the surrounding world. The question of faith occupies an important place among the commented topics. The picture of faith of Lusatians – as seen through the prism of the vision of heaven and hell preserved in the Upper Lusatian proverbs – seems to be quite interesting. On the one hand, it confirms stereotypical conceptions of heaven and hell as a space between two opposite poles which are good and evil. Heaven is the supreme value and the place of reward for suffering on earth, whereas hell is the place of punishment for the committed sins, the place from which there is no return. Moreover, the proverbs show distinctly that moral principles are clearly determined and closely linked with the teachings of the Church. On the other hand, they allow one to become acquainted with social relationships prevailing in the Lusatian countryside in the bygone centuries

Łužiski serbski słownik K. B. Pfula jako słownik „odrodzeniowy”

Published in 1866, “Łužiski serbski słownik” compiled by Křesćan Bohuwěr Pful was completed as a result of cultural and national revival of Slavic Lausatians and constitutes the first reliable work on the lexis of the Upper Sorbian language. A comparison of the lexical corpus constituting this dictionary with the language used in the press of the time (the material has been excerpted from two year’s issues of the weekly ”Tydźenska Nowina” (Weekly messages) published in 1851 and 1853) seems to be sufficient enough to evaluate the lexis included in the Pful’s dictionary and to provide an answer to what extent this lexicon recorded the vocabulary of the first decades of the national revival. A juxtaposition of the material demonstrates that the Pful dictionary largely reflects the development of the Upper Sorbian language in the latter half of the nineteenth century, for the material encompasses not only the vocabulary of the past centuries but also contemporary loans and borrowings from the Czech language, less frequently from Polish or, generally Slavic loans, to be found in the press. Pful also records a number of older Germanisms. Interestingly enough, the dictionary does not include words that are used internationally though they are quite frequent in the issues of ”Tydźenska Nowina”. Pful replaces them with his propositions of either borrowings from the Czech language or neologisms of his own, often modeled after their Czech counterparts. The dictionary also lacks numerous compounds, collocations and the words that had been apparently coined by the editors of the weekly (oftentimes loan translations from German, e.g. płododružiny (Fruchtarten)). The Pful’s dictionary is also characterized by a certain discernible excess of lexical propositions of the author himself as compared to the actual material excerpted from the publication. The above should be rather treated as an expression of the author’s deliberate attempt to enliven and enrich the Upper Sorbian lexis at the time of the awakening of Sorbian consciousness