Talk:wobraz

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US borrowing?[edit]

Is LS wobraz borrowed from US? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 16:27, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know. Upper-Sorbianisms are usually labeled as such in Starosta's dictionary, and wobraz is not labeled as one. What makes you think it might be? —Angr 16:38, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
[1] "nach dem Os., st. ns. hobraz". But now I read that prothetic consonants have some kind of pseudo-random distribution, sometimes are not pronounced at all, and that they've switched form h- to w- simply to make it orthographically more similar to US. My reasoning was that both hobraz and wobraz were two different words, with independently acquired different prothetic consonants, each deserving separate etymology. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 16:45, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah; I don't know much about the historical phonology of Sorbian and where these prothetic consonants come from, but nowadays the Lower Sorbian pronunciation is just [obras] regardless of whether it's spelled with a silent initial h or a silent initial w. I don't know what "st." stands for in the quote above; stets perhaps? Anyway hobraz isn't even listed in Starosta's dictionary. I do know that there are a lot of Upper Sorbianisms in Lower Sorbian because it's historically been difficult to find enough teachers who are native speakers of LS, so they import US speakers to teach school in LS, which has had an uppersorbifying effect (sometimes intentional, sometimes unintentional) on the spelling and the language. —Angr 17:01, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure what it means either (I thought steht). Thanks for clarification. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 17:26, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Now I think statt is most likely. If it were stets it would have to come after "ns.", and steht wouldn't make any sense grammatically. —Angr 19:21, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]