European and Eurasian Undergraduate Research Symposium

European and Eurasian Undergraduate Research Symposium 2021 Proceedings 1 Session 1 Linguistics 11 May 2021 URS Proceedings 2 The Sorbian Language – Education’s Struggle Against a Millennium of Occupation Sean Lis, University of Alberta In the age of Globalization, education serves as a bulwark amongst a variety of factors that protect endangered languages from the encroaching tide of language death whether it is wrought by the auspicious allure of globally prestigious languages, or the hardships of hostile language contact; in the case of contemporary Sorbian, this is their fact of reality. The issues that beset contemporary Sorbian language education have their roots in the historical context of over a millennium of occupation of land of Lusatia itself. These root issues are intrinsic to understanding contemporary struggles in implementing minority language education models in the circumstances of a language environment coinhabited by the German speech community – the majority language and one of global prestige. So too does the global language environment (where English serves as the de facto lingua franca), pressure Sorbian language planners and individuals to consider the vast array of languages that could provide optimal routes to a prosperous future for oneself, the Sorbian speech community, and the global community. Given a holistic understanding of the history and contemporary situation of the Sorbian languages, as well as reflections and analysis of the Sorbian language education system, further scholarship could speculate as to the future course of the Sorbian languages, and as to actions and improvements that could continue to preserve them; preventing the potential for language death. The Sorbian language is a West-Slavic minority language family in East Germany that has, for most of its recorded existence, endured under the circumstances of occupation, enveloped by a historically malicious German-language majority. The Sorbian language is not a unitary language, rather, the two Sorbian languages are known as Upper and Lower Sorbian, which, despite their linguistic relationship, are only partially mutually intelligible. Possessing roughly 25,000 speakers of Upper Sorbian and 7000 speakers of Lower Sorbian, popular discourse regarding the ethnolinguistic situation in Lusatia, the homeland of the Sorbs, often simplifies the two distinct languages as a unitary construct of simply the “Sorbian language”. Further, Sorbian communities are not ethnolinguistically homogenously Sorbian. Thus, coexisting with local German-speaking communities necessitates that the German speech community must also be accounted for when crafting language policy (Marti, 2007, p. 32). One of the utmost priorities for Sorbian language planners is language planning in education, which theoretically and practically differ in approach when contrasting Upper Lusatia, the territory of Upper Sorbian speakers, and Lower Lusatia, the territory of Lower Sorbian speakers. In practice, the education systems of Upper and Lower Lusatia have their own unique struggles, particularly with balancing language maintenance with the production of new speakers while, at the same time, incorporating considerations for the German speech community that coinhabits the territories. Regardless of the means, both systems, under the guidance of the Witaj project, seek the same end: the preservation of the Sorbian language and its speech community given a history of occupation spanning over a millennium. Lusatia’s history of occupation began with the expansions of Karl, son of Charles the Great, eastwards in the year 806 AD. From that point onwards, the Sorbs faced numerous occupations by Germanic peoples, as well as other Slavic peoples, that have threatened the sovereignty and existence of their languages (Stone, 2015, p. 10). Ownership of Lusatia would transition between German, Polish, and Czech control – culminating ultimately in the conversion of the pagan Sorbs to Catholicism. The conversion of the Sorbian people to Catholicism would incidentally become a feature that would help preserve the Upper Sorbian language, as the Catholic Kingdom of Saxony would prove far more lenient in the use of the Sorbian language in church services than their Protestant counterparts in Prussia, who ruled over Lower Lusatia (Stone, 2015 p. 10-14; Dołowy-Rybińska et al., 2019, p. 1). Under the administrations of Saxony and Prussia, the Sorbian peoples faced varying levels of Germanization, the process by which German authorities sought to assimilate the Slavic languages, cultures, and peoples of its Eastern territories to the German majority. Lower Lusatia under Prussian rule faced more active and 3 comprehensive policies towards Germanization than those implemented in Upper Lusatia, as the Saxons did not pursue such policies as extensively (Dołowy-Rybińska, 2017, p. 11). Prior to German unification in the 19th Century, there was, at least formally, no official language policy for the German-speaking majority; attempts at Germanization were primarily localized rather than systemic. Sporadically, there various attempts to eliminate the Sorbian language from schools and churches prior to German unification (Marti, 2007, p. 36-37). The 19th Century’s new united German state incepted a coherent German language policy, which, through plans to systemically Germanize the lands of Lusatia, severely threatened Sorbian language sovereignty. Local authorities reluctantly allowed the use of Sorbian in public under the condition that effective communication in German was impossible, but official policy forbade the use of the Sorbian tongue in all public spheres, especially schools and hospitals (Marti, 2007, p. 34). While recognition of Sorbian minority language rights was briefly introduced during the Weimar Republic, the peak of Sorbian language oppression subsequently occurred under the Nazi regime shortly after. In line with the goals of the Nazi regime in eradicating the existence of minority groups from German lands, the Sorbian people, along with other Slavs living under the Third Reich, were once again targets of sweeping Germanization. However, following World War II, with the establishment of the DDR came a new language policy that initially ended the Germanization of Lusatia in full, and allowed for Sorbian- language schools to be established. This policy would change once again in the 1950s, and, while the language was still supported as a minority language, the goal once again became the gradual Germanization of the Sorbs. Following German reunification in the 1990s, official recognition of Sorbian minority language rights was reinstated on the state level, but not the federal level. (Marti, 2007, p. 32). Since then, Upper and Lower Sorbian education planning was finally able to take root with the establishment of the Witaj program. The Witaj program, following Germany’s reunification, democratization, and recognition of minority groups such as the Sorbs, emerged with one goal in mind: the revitalization of the Sorbian languages, primarily through language planning in education (Dołowy-Rybińska, 2017 p. 11). The approaches taken with regards to revitalizing the languages are nuanced to suit the historical and contemporary circumstances and environmental factors differentiating the Upper and Lower Sorbian languages. Upper Sorbian, by virtue of religious reinforcement and historically less stringent Germanization policies, has preserved a relatively sizeable population of its native speakers, and thus finds itself in a more tenable situation than its Lower Sorbian sister language. To highlight the significance of this demographic contrast, compared with the Upper Lusatia’s fully established pre-K-12 language school system, Lower Sorbian language schools face a scarcity of Lower Sorbian speaking teachers needed to educate the incoming generation of new speakers (Deutsche Welle, 2010). The differences in the prolonged historical circumstances between Upper and Lower Lusatia define their respective approaches to implementing minority language education models, and therefore must be examined independently from one another in order to understand the current state of Sorbian language education holistically. Starting with the more populous of the two languages, Upper Sorbian language schools follow the European Union’s recommended “2 plus” system for bilingual education whereby students receive bilingual instruction in Upper Sorbian and German, with the requirement to learn an additional third language (Dołowy-Rybińska et al., 2019, p. 6). This system aims to integrate German and Sorbian speaking children into each other’s respective speech communities, but due to the segregation of students along lines of language proficiencies, these aims are difficult to achieve. From kindergarten to grade 10, students are segregated into three separate groupings based on proficiency in Upper Sorbian, with native Sorbian speakers, those semi-proficient in Upper Sorbian, and non-Sorbian speakers segregated accordingly. However, starting in grade 11, all three groupings are melded together into one body, producing classrooms where students fluent in Sorbian coexist with students to whom the language is nearly incomprehensible. The policies that segregate non-native Sorbian speakers, while acting in the interest of preserving Upper Sorbian, creates feelings of alienation within German speakers seeking to 4 establish proficiency in Upper Sorbian within the bilingual schooling system (Dołowy-Rybińska, 2018,

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