Sorbian languages in the context of "Lower Sorbian language"

Sorbs (Upper Sorbian: Serbja; Lower Sorbian: Serby; German: Sorben pronounced [ˈzɔʁbn̩] ; Czech: Lužičtí Srbové; Polish: Serbołużyczanie; also known as Lusatians, Lusatian Serbs and Wends) are an indigenous West Slavic ethnic group predominantly inhabiting the parts of Lusatia located in the German states of Saxony and Brandenburg. Sorbs traditionally speak the Sorbian languages (also known as "Wendish" and "Lusatian"), which are closely related to Czech and Lechitic languages. Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian are officially recognized minority languages in Germany.

In the Early Middle Ages, the Sorbs formed their own principality, which later shortly became part of the early West Slavic Samo's Empire and Great Moravia, as were ultimately conquered by the East Francia (Sorbian March) and Holy Roman Empire (Saxon Eastern March, Margravate of Meissen, March of Lusatia). From the High Middle Ages, they were ruled at various times by the closely related Poles and Czechs, as well as the more distant Germans and Hungarians. Due to a gradual and increasing assimilation between the 17 and 20 centuries, virtually all Sorbs also spoke German by the early 20 century. In the newly created German nation state of the late 19 and early 20 centuries, policies were implemented in an effort to Germanize the Sorbs. These policies reached their climax under the Nazi regime, who denied the existence of the Sorbs as a distinct Slavic people by referring to them as "Sorbian-speaking Germans". The community is divided religiously between Roman Catholicism (the majority) and Lutheranism. The former Minister President of Saxony Stanislaw Tillich is of Sorbian origin.

Dresden (/ˈdrɛzdən/; German: [ˈdʁeːsdn̩] ; Upper Saxon: Dräsdn; Upper Sorbian: Drježdźany, pronounced [ˈdʁʲɛʒdʒanɨ]) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth largest by area (after Berlin, Hamburg, and Cologne), and the third-most populous city in the area of former East Germany, after Berlin and Leipzig. Dresden's urban area comprises the towns of Freital, Pirna, Radebeul, Meissen, Coswig, Radeberg, and Heidenau and has around 790,000 inhabitants. The Dresden metropolitan area has over 1.3 million inhabitants.

Dresden is the second largest city on the River Elbe after Hamburg. Most of the city's population lives in the Elbe Valley, but a large, albeit very sparsely populated, area of the city east of the Elbe lies in the West Lusatian Hill Country and Uplands (the westernmost part of the Sudetes) and thus in Lusatia. Many boroughs west of the Elbe lie in the Ore Mountain Foreland, as well as in the valleys of the rivers rising there and flowing through Dresden, the longest of which are the Weißeritz and the Lockwitzbach. The name of the city as well as the names of most of its boroughs and rivers are of Sorbian origin.

The Lechitic (or Lekhitic) languages are a language subgroup consisting of Polish and several other languages and dialects that were once spoken in the area that is now Poland and eastern Germany. It is one of the branches of the larger West Slavic subgroup; the other branches of this subgroup are the Czech–Slovak languages and the Sorbian languages.

The Polish alphabet (Polish: alfabet polski, abecadło) is the script of the Polish language, the basis for the Polish system of orthography. It is based on the Latin alphabet but includes certain letters (9) with diacritics: the stroke (acute accent or bar) – kreska: ⟨ć, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź⟩; the overdot – kropka: ⟨ż⟩; and the tail or ogonek – ⟨ą, ę⟩. The letters ⟨q⟩, ⟨v⟩, and ⟨x⟩, which are used only in foreign words, are usually absent from the Polish alphabet. Additionally, before the standardization of Polish spelling, ⟨qu⟩ was sometimes used in place of ⟨kw⟩, and ⟨x⟩ in place of ⟨ks⟩.

Modified variations of the Polish alphabet are used for writing Silesian and Kashubian, whereas the Sorbian languages use a mixture of Polish and Czech orthography.

Dual (abbreviated DU) is a grammatical number that some languages use in addition to singular and plural. When a noun or pronoun appears in dual form, it is interpreted as referring to precisely two of the entities (objects or persons) identified by the noun or pronoun acting as a single unit or in unison. Verbs can also have dual agreement forms in these languages.

The dual number existed in Proto-Indo-European and persisted in many of its descendants, such as Ancient Greek and Sanskrit, which have dual forms across nouns, verbs, and adjectives; Gothic, which used dual forms in pronouns and verbs; and Old English (Anglo-Saxon), which used dual forms in its pronouns. It can still be found in a few modern Indo-European languages such as Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Lithuanian, Slovene, and Sorbian languages.

The Spree (/ʃpreɪ, spreɪ/ S(H)PRAY, German: [ʃpʁeː] ; Sorbian languages: Sprjewja, Lower Sorbian: [ˈsprʲɛwʲa], Upper Sorbian: [ˈspʁʲɛwʲa]; in Lower Sorbian also called Rěka) is a river in Germany and the Czech Republic. With a length of approximately 400 kilometres (250 mi), it is the main tributary of the Havel River. The Spree is much longer than the Havel, which it flows into at Berlin-Spandau; the Havel then flows into the Elbe at Havelberg. The river rises in the Lusatian Highlands, in the Lusatian part of Saxony, where it has three sources: the historical one called Spreeborn in the village of Spreedorf [de], the water-richest one in Neugersdorf, and the highest elevated one in Eibau. The Spree then flows northwards through Upper and Lower Lusatia, where it crosses the border between Saxony and Brandenburg. After passing through Cottbus, it forms the Spree Forest (German: Spreewald), a large inland delta and biosphere reserve. It then flows through Lake Schwielochsee before entering Berlin, as Müggelspree [de] (pronounced [ˈmʏɡl̩ˌʃpʁeː] ).

The Spree is the main river of Berlin, Brandenburg, Lusatia, and the settlement area of the Sorbs, who call the river Sprjewja; the name derives ultimately from Proto-Germanic *spreutaną "to spring forth". For a very short distance close to its sources, the Spree constitutes, as Spréva, the border between Germany and the Czech Republic. The Spree's longest tributaries are Dahme (confluence in Berlin-Köpenick) and Schwarzer Schöps (Čorny Šepc; confluence in Boxberg/O.L.-Sprey [de]), other well-known tributaries (since they are Berlin rivers) are Panke and Wuhle.

The Weißeritz (German pronunciation: [ˈvaɪsəʁɪts]; also: Vereinigte Weißeritz in German i.e. United Weißeritz, Bystrica in Sorbian) is a river of Saxony, Germany. It is 13.7 km [8.5 mi] long and a left tributary of the Elbe.

The river is formed by the confluence of the Wild Weißeritz and Red Weißeritz in Freital.The Weißeritz runs through Freital and Dresden. It crosses the deep valley Plauenscher Grund between Freital and Dresden and enters the Dresden Basin. The railway line from Dresden to Nuremberg runs next to the river in this close valley. The river is displaced in an old sidearm in Dresden for flood protection reasons and therefore canalised. In Dresden, it enters the Elbe from the left.