LANGUAGES AND CULTURES IN CONTACT. THE PLACE OF NEW SPEAKERS IN THE EDUCATION SYSTEM IN UPPER LUSATIA
LANGUAGES AND CULTURES IN CONTACT. THE PLACE OF NEW SPEAKERS IN THE EDUCATION SYSTEM IN UPPER LUSATIA

Summary/Abstract: Upper Sorbs are a Slavic minority group living in eastern Germany. The number of Upper Sorbian speakers is diminishing. Upper Sorbs, the majority of whom are Catholics, have a strong ethnic identity based on language, faith, and tradition and they form a rather closed community in relation to the surrounding German population. To counteract the process of language loss, the Sorbs have established an educational project called ‘Witaj’. The continuation of this project is the ‘2 plus’ program of bilingual education in schools, which has been implemented by the federal state of Saxony. The idea behind these initiatives is to connect native Upper Sorbian speakers and learners in order to facilitate the achievement of language competence and to break down existing ethnic boundaries. The realisation of this concept has encountered numerous problems. The German-speaking pupils involved often feel unmotivated to learn Sorbian and are often rejected by the Sorbian-speaking community as (potential) members. This article presents the results of a research project examining the way young people from German-speaking homes who attend one of the Upper Sorbian middle schools acquire Sorbian language competence and how they create an identity in relation/opposition to their Sorbian speaking peers. The analysis is based on the sociolinguistic observations of language practices conducted in the school in 2017 and on interviews with both native speakers and learners of Upper Sorbian.

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