History
About 2800 Polabian words are known (but of prosaic writings, only a few prayers, one wedding song and a few folktales). Immediately before the language went extinct several people started to collect phrases, compile wordlists and were engaged with folklore of the Polabian Slavs, but only one of them appears to have been a native speaker of Polabian (himself leaving only 13 pages of linguistically relevant material from a 310-page manuscript). The last native speaker of Polabian, a woman, died in 1756, and the last person who spoke limited Polabian died in 1825.
The most important monument of the language is the so-called Vocabularium Venedicum (1679—1719) by Christian Hennig.
The language left some traces to this day in toponymy; for example, Wustrow "Place on the island", Lüchow (Polabian: Ljauchüw), Sagard, Gartow etc. It is also a likely the origin of the name Berlin, from the Polabian stem berl-/birl- (“swamp”).
Read more about this topic: Polabian Language
Famous quotes containing the word history:
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—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“If you look at the 150 years of modern China’s history since the Opium Wars, then you can’t avoid the conclusion that the last 15 years are the best 15 years in China’s modern history.”
—J. Stapleton Roy (b. 1935)
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—Newt Gingrich (b. 1943)