WIA LANGUAGES PROJECT

[Day 25/221]

Hornjoserbšćina

Upper Sorbian | Obersorbisch

“The Last Slavic Flame in Germany’s Heart”

A quiet revolution, 221 languages’ digital archive • We’re not saving languages. We’re creating eternity.

Every 14 days, a language falls silent. But the language we meet today has performed a miracle: surviving 1,500 years in the very heart of Germany. Alone in a Germanic sea, it has preserved a Slavic voice. This is Upper Sorbian—Hornjoserbšćina [horn-yoh-SERB-shchih-nah].

Walk through the streets of Bautzen (Budyšin in Sorbian) in Saxony, and every sign speaks two languages. German sits alongside, or above, unfamiliar characters that breathe alongside it. This is not mere courtesy. This is living proof of 1,500 years of survival.

For those familiar with Korea’s journey, there’s a parallel worth noting. Just as Korean faced existential threats under colonial rule yet thrived through deliberate preservation and digital documentation, Upper Sorbian demonstrates that minority languages can not only survive but flourish when communities, governments, and technology unite.

1,500 Years of Refusing Silence

In the 6th century CE, Slavic peoples crossed the Elbe River, migrating into what is now eastern Germany. They settled in a region called Lusatia, and their language spread along forests and rivers. At its peak in the 17th century, over 300,000 people spoke, sang, and prayed in this language.

Upper Sorbian belongs to the West Slavic language family, sharing ancestry with Czech, Polish, and Slovak. Linguistically, it sits at a fascinating crossroads: while classified with the Lechitic languages (like Polish and Kashubian), it also shares significant features with the Czech-Slovak subgroup. This unique position makes Upper Sorbian particularly valuable for understanding the evolution of Slavic languages.

But history proved cruel. From the 13th century onward, Germanization policies persisted for hundreds of years. Sorbian was banned in schools. Its use in public spaces was punished. During the Nazi era, the very identity of “Sorbian” was denied—they were merely labeled “Sorbian-speaking Germans.”

Think of it this way: imagine if English had survived as a minority language in France for fifteen centuries, maintaining its identity through wars, occupations, and systematic suppression. That’s the magnitude of what Upper Sorbian has achieved.

Yet the language survived. In the lullabies Catholic grandmothers whispered to their grandchildren. In the blessing prayers of the Easter horse procession (Osterreiten). In the hymns of church masses. In that magnificent procession where 400 men in black hats ride black horses from village to village, announcing the resurrection—Upper Sorbian breathed on.

The key to this survival? Geography and faith. The Catholic communities in Upper Lusatia maintained intergenerational transmission even when Protestant Sorbian areas succumbed to German. Religion created protective boundaries that Germanization policies struggled to penetrate. It’s a reminder that language preservation often succeeds not through policy alone, but through the interweaving of language, faith, and community identity.

18,000 Voices Between Hope and Despair

As of 2025, approximately 18,000 to 25,000 people speak Upper Sorbian. But this number conceals a complex reality. Fewer than half use the language daily. The trend toward German monolingualism continues even in Sorbian heartlands.

Yet in the village of Crostwitz (Chrósćicy in Sorbian) and surrounding Catholic areas, a different story unfolds. In the triangle formed by Bautzen-Hoyerswerda-Kamenz, 60-90% of the population still speaks Upper Sorbian. Children laugh on playgrounds in Sorbian. Young people whisper love in Sorbian. Elders pray in Sorbian.

In these villages, Mass is conducted in Sorbian. Schools teach all subjects in Sorbian. Street signs, government documents, even bus announcements—everything breathes in two languages. Here, Upper Sorbian is not a dying language but a living daily reality.

What makes this survival possible? The answer is multifaceted. Legal protection under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages provides a framework. From 2021 to 2025, the German federal government, Brandenburg, and Saxony jointly fund Sorbian preservation with €23.916 million annually. But money alone doesn’t preserve languages—communities do.

The Sorbian community has created a comprehensive ecosystem of preservation: Sorbian-language kindergartens, bilingual schools, a Sorbian gymnasium (academic high school), daily newspapers (Serbske Nowiny), cultural institutions like the German-Sorbian Folk Theater in Bautzen, and the Domowina federation that coordinates over 20 Sorbian organizations.

The Language That Preserved the Dual

Upper Sorbian preserves a grammatical miracle nearly extinct in modern languages: the dual number. This is a separate grammatical category specifically for pairs.

One hand is “ruka” [ROO-kah]. Two hands are “ruce” [ROO-tseh]. Three or more hands are “ruki” [ROO-kih]. Where English and most modern languages distinguish only between one and many, Upper Sorbian has a special category for “two.”

This isn’t just grammar—it’s philosophy. The dual number acknowledges the unique nature of pairs: two eyes (woči), two hands (ruce), two people (dwaj). Among living Indo-European languages, only a handful preserve this feature. Upper Sorbian has embedded the value of partnership, of togetherness, into its grammatical structure.

But Upper Sorbian’s linguistic treasures extend further. Unlike most West Slavic languages, Upper Sorbian retains synthetic past tense forms (aorist and imperfect) that have disappeared from Polish, Czech, and Slovak. It’s as if the language serves as a living museum of archaic Slavic features, offering linguists a window into how Proto-Slavic might have functioned.

Digital Archives: Building the Next 1,500 Years

WIA doesn’t simply translate. We digitally preserve the records, creating permanent, globally accessible archives.

Upper Sorbian already stands at the forefront of digital revolution. In February 2022, Upper Sorbian became the first minority language in Germany integrated into Microsoft Bing Translator. This breakthrough resulted from collaboration between Professor Alexander Fraser’s team at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the Witaj Language Center, who created a corpus of 200,000 parallel Upper Sorbian-German sentence pairs to train the AI.

Consider the implications: a student in Berlin can now read Upper Sorbian documents. A linguist in Seoul can research Sorbian poetry. A descendant in Sydney can understand letters written in their ancestors’ language. Digital archives transcend time and space, creating linguistic permanence.

The Witaj program (witaj means “welcome” in Sorbian) uses language immersion education to create new speakers. Children from German-speaking families naturally acquire Sorbian in kindergarten through everyday interaction. As of 2009, 12 Sorbian kindergartens operated in Saxony, with many schools offering Sorbian instruction. The program demonstrates a crucial principle: language revitalization requires not just preserving what exists, but actively creating new speakers.

Here’s where the Korea connection becomes particularly relevant. Just as Korea’s language preservation succeeded through comprehensive digital documentation and institutional support, Upper Sorbian shows that even small communities can leverage technology for survival. The sotra translator (Sorbian Translator), developed collaboratively by the Sorbian community and Munich researchers, now enables translation between Upper Sorbian and over 100 languages.

Leipzig University maintains the only Sorabistics Institute in Germany, training new generations of Sorbian teachers. The Sorbian Institute publishes academic journals, preserves cultural heritage, and conducts cutting-edge research. This infrastructure—educational, technological, institutional—creates the foundation for long-term survival.

What the Easter Horse Procession Carries Forward

Every Easter, 400 men don black hats and mount black horses. They travel from village to village, announcing the resurrection. In this tradition continuing since the 17th century, every prayer resonates in Upper Sorbian.

This is religious ceremony, yes, but also linguistic transmission. Fathers to sons, grandfathers to grandsons—across generations, the language’s rhythm, intonation, and prayer formulas pass down. The Osterreiten isn’t museum performance but living culture, where language serves as the sacred vessel carrying faith forward.

At Bautzen’s German-Sorbian Folk Theater, performances unfold simultaneously in German, Upper Sorbian, and Lower Sorbian. The daily newspaper Serbske Nowiny publishes entirely in Sorbian. Domowina, the umbrella organization founded in 1912, coordinates cultural activities and represents Sorbian interests to German authorities and international bodies.

Cultural traditions like the Bird Wedding (Ptači kwas), where children celebrate the courtship of birds on January 25, or the intricate Easter egg painting (jejka pisać) that transforms eggs into art—these practices don’t merely accompany the language. They create contexts where speaking Sorbian feels natural, necessary, and joyful.

1,500 Years Endured, Another 1,500 Ahead

Upper Sorbian stands as living proof that minority languages can survive. It demonstrates that digital technology can serve as language preservation’s ally. It shows that when governments, communities, and scholars unite, miracles happen.

The challenges remain real. Language shift toward German continues. Young Sorbs increasingly choose German for professional advancement. Geographic dispersion threatens community cohesion. Lower Sorbian, Upper Sorbian’s sibling language spoken in Brandenburg, faces even more critical endangerment with fewer than 7,000 speakers.

Yet the infrastructure for survival now exists in ways unimaginable even 30 years ago. Digital archives ensure that even if spoken use declines, the language remains accessible for future revival. AI translation tools make Sorbian usable in global contexts. Educational programs create pathways for new speakers.

WIA Languages preserves this miracle digitally for eternity. In 221 days, when all languages are recorded in digital archives, Upper Sorbian’s story will serve as a beacon of hope for other languages.

When a child in Crostwitz uses the sotra translator to message a friend, when a researcher in Seoul accesses the Sorbian digital archive, when someone in the future discovers the philosophy of “two” embedded in the word “ruce”—all these moments build the future of a language that has already endured 1,500 years.

221 languages. 221 days.
Today, Upper Sorbian’s voice echoes across time, reaching your heart.
A language that endured 1,500 years now breathes eternally in digital archives.

With WIA, every voice becomes eternal.