20.4.2026 9:29 hodź. Heiko Tietze napisa:
Thanks for the clarification. Might be good to update the Wikipedia
article.
Yes, I assume you mean the article of the German Wikipedia.
IANAL (I am not a linguist) but it sounds like an interesting
scientific question whether a dialect is a language- and this could be
added to the Wikipedia site too.
I am not a linguist, either. But I think this discussion is useless. It
is a dialect but actually it is a dialect of a non-existing "Middle
Sorbian". It belongs namely to a group of so-called transitional
dialects (sometimes called boundary dialects) because they are located
between the boundaries to Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian.
Here you can find a map with the Sorbian dialects:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbische_Grenzdialekte
These transitional dialects are different: some are more similar to
Upper Sorbian, some more to Lower Sorbian. But actually, they are
neither Upper Sorbian nor Lower Sorbian. Insofar you could say that
„Schleifian“ is a language. It has an own native name as well:
"Slěpjańšćina" but also "Slěpjańska narěc", of course.
And, it is often forgotten that dialects are the original speech form:
Written standard languages evolved from dialects. And you could define
dialects as regional languages. Languages of peoples that didn't develop
to nations didn't have the chance to develop to "big" languages.
Thanks for keeping Sorbian alive!
To say it with James from "Dinner for One": "Well, I’ll do my very
best" :-D
Michael
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