# Sorbian: Has Hornjoserbski anything to do with Serbian?



## Vasya_Polak

I found some articles about Serbs which living in east of Germany. Also they have their own language and it calls Serbian. 
I'm interesting is it same with Serbian or not? Although why does it calls Hornjoserbian. What does word hornjo in Serbian means? Something like mountains or hills?


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## TriglavNationalPark

Vasya_Polak said:


> I found some articles about serbs which living in east of Germany. Also they have their own language and it calls serbian.
> I'm interesting is it same with serbian or not? Although why does it calls hornjoserbian. What does word hornjo in serbian means? Something like mountains or hills?



S*o*rbian, sometimes called Lusatian Sorbian (very rarely also Lusatian Serbian), is a West Slavic language spoken in Germany, whereas S*e*rbian is a South Slavic language that forms a part of the BCS language group. They are therefore related as Slavic languages but not more than that; Polish and Czech are the two closest linguistic relatives of Sorbian.

Yes, they names that Sorbian and Serbian use to refer to themselves are nearly identical (*serbski* in Lower Sorbian vs. *srpski* in Serbian), but this isn't unusual in the Slavic world: Slovaks and Slovenes also use more or less the same demonyms for themselves (*slovenský* vs. *slovenski*).

Sorbian has two literary standards: Lower Sorbian and Upper Sorbian, which are often classified as separate languages.

Besides Slovenian, Sorbian is the only Indo-European language that has preserved the full dual grammatical number.


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## sokol

To add to this, Sorbian is not at all closely related to Serbian - it is closest to its Slavic neighbours, Polish and Czech.
(I think Upper Sorbian is supposed to be closer to Czech while Lower Sorbian is somewhat closer to Polish, or was it the other way round? you may take took a look at Hornjoserbski and Dolnoserbski Wiki; spelling looks like a mix between Polish and Czech, and if you compare the language - I only took a few minutes - it isn't as if you could say at once that one of them were closer to Czech, or Polish.)


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## werrr

sokol said:


> (I think Upper Sorbian is supposed to be closer to Czech while Lower Sorbian is somewhat closer to Polish, or was it the other way round?


It is this way and it is pretty natural as it corresponds to the geographical location.


> spelling looks like a mix between Polish and Czech, and if you compare the language - I only took a few minutes - it isn't as if you could say at once that one of them were closer to Czech, or Polish.)


For Czechs, the difference is evident.

Some linguists even consider the Upper Sorbian to be historically closer to Czech than to Lower Sorbian.


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## Ozar Midrashim

From the linguistic point of view, the replies given are correct. However, it's interesting to note that there is a quite widespread view according to which the Serbs and Croats came to the Balkans in the 7 century "from some place further north". It is so reported in the historical document "De administrando imperio" written by the Bizantine Emperor Constantine VII. For this reason, many tend to identify the Sorbian lands with the original "Old Serbia".

However, probably things are not so easy. The place from which the Serbs came was indeed situated somewhere near Bohemia, but I read somewhere (sorry I forgot where!) that the modern Sorbs are actually not the descendants of the old Serbs who stayed in their land, but the descendants of a different, Polabian Slavic tribe which adopted the name of their neighbours.


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## Коста

Vasya_Polak said:


> What does word hornjo in Serbian Sorbian means? Something like mountains or hills?


Hornjo means _upper_.


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## xpictianoc

It's interesting that sound "g" transformed to "h" like Czech, Slovak and Ukrainian. 
Hornjo in Polish górno.


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## Mishe

sokol said:


> To add to this, Sorbian is not at all closely related to Serbian - it is closest to its Slavic neighbours, Polish and Czech.
> (I think Upper Sorbian is supposed to be closer to Czech while Lower Sorbian is somewhat closer to Polish, or was it the other way round? you may take took a look at Hornjoserbski and Dolnoserbski Wiki; spelling looks like a mix between Polish and Czech, and if you compare the language - I only took a few minutes - it isn't as if you could say at once that one of them were closer to Czech, or Polish.)



Very interesting that a language with a relatively small number of speakers actually adopted two standards.


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## natasha2000

Коста said:


> Hornjo means _upper_.



Excuse me, but... In which language? 

As far as I know, in Serbian, upper is gornji, not hornji...


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## xpictianoc

not in Serbian but in S*o*rbian


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## natasha2000

xpictianoc said:


> not in Serbian but in S*o*rbian



Thanks!!!! I wasn't reading carefully, I guess...


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