Canadian Slavonic Papers

Dolnoserbsko-nimski słownik/Niedersorbisch deutsches Wörterbuch by Manfred StarostaReview by: Gunter SchaarschmidtCanadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, Vol. 42, No. 3 (SEPTEMBER 2000),pp. 421-423Published by: Canadian Association of SlavistsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40870211 .

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Book Reviews 421

be a model for a secular institution of higher learning. The new university was seen as the peak of the district's educational hierarchy that began with village primary schools and included provincial gymnasia. Most of the letters are addressed to Hieronim Stroynowski, the university's rector, but Tadeusz Czacki, Provincial Inspector, and various university professors also were recipients of Czartoryski's correspondence concerning the university during this period.

The letters shed light on the work of Czartoryski to build not only a university but also to strengthen the Polish nation, using educational and cultural work as tools for revival. The correspondence also testifies to the continuing influence of the Polish Enlightenment into the early nineteenth century. Certainly this selection of correspondence gives a flavour not only of the progress achieved but also of the limitations existing. For example, there is a letter of congratulations of 15 March 1805 to Prof. Stanislaw Jundzilt on the publication of his textbook on botany, the first ever in Polish. However, in his letter of 17 March 1805 to Stroynowski, Czartoryski details his reasons for establishing a Russian-language gymnasium in Kiev rather than a Polish institution.

Today's educational administrator will be surprised by how much Czartoryski engaged himself in the daily business of the university, particularly given his deep involvement in international, affairs during this period. The prince deals with the salaries and promotions of individual professors, questions concerning curriculum, and even the appropriate dedications to the Emperor! The correspondence thus demonstrates the energy and interests, as well as the power and intelligence of this Polish aristocrat who believed that higher education could link Poles and the Russian Empire.

The volume comprises 40 letters, copied into a diary and covering the period from January to September 1805. Most letters are in Polish but some are in French or German. Sokoloski's editorial apparatus is impressive: in addition to a preface, an introductory essay on Czartoryski, a bibliography, and a translation, there is also a modernised transcription of the original text. Moreover, for linguistic analysis, he includes in an appendix the direct transcription of the letters in their original orthography and punctuation. (Unfortunately, the map on p. 215 is not of the Vilna Educational District as labeled, but rather of the entire Polish Commonwealth in its boundaries of 1772.)

Czartoryski's accomplishments in the early nineteenth century are often cited by historians. These letters not only reveal in detail the efforts he exerted but also manifest his character as a decision-maker.

John Stanley, Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities

Manfred Starosta. Dolnoserbsko-nimski siownik/Niedersorbisch- deutsches Wörterbuch. Budysin [Bautzen]: Domowina, 1999. 720 pp. DM 39, cloth.

It is ironic that Lower Sorbían, with its dwindling number of speakers, gets a new Sorbi an-German dictionary earlier than Upper Sorbían which, while enjoying vigorous language maintenance, last saw the publication of a major Sorbian-German

Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavistes Vol. XLII, No. 3, September 2000

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422 Book Reviews

dictionary in 1954 (the outdated Jakubas). Perhaps, this new dictionary, however incomplete and imperfect, will contribute toward averting, if only by a generation or two, the death of Lower Sorbían, a language threatened by imminent extinction. This is quite in line with Nancy Dorian's statement that "supporting a minority group's efforts to hang on for one or two more generations might prove central to future revitalization efforts" (Language 70 [1994]: 801). After decades of somewhat inflated estimates, field work conducted after German unification now puts the number of competent Lower Sorbían speakers at no more than 5,000 (Ludwig Ela [=Ludwig Elle], "Die heutige Situation der sorbischen Sprache und Konzepte zu ihrer Revitalisierung," Maintenance, Revitalization and Development of Minority Languages. Bautzen/Budysin: Sorbisches Institut/Serbski Institut, 2000, 17-21). The large majority of these speakers (some 60%) are over 60 years old (Han Stenwijk, "Nëkotare wuslëdki sociolinguistiskego napsasowanja w Dolnjej Luzycy," Rozhlad 49: 12 [1999]: 442-447).

After the monumental three-volume Lower Sorbi an-German dictionary by Arnost Muka (= Ernst Mucke) appeared between 1911 and 1928, in St. Petersburg/Prague, there were just two publications available to the interested scholar of the post-World War II period: Deutsch-niedersorbisches Taschenwörterbuch (Bautzen, 1953) and

Bogumii Swjela's Dolnoserbsko-nëmski stownik (Bautzen, 1963). Each of these small volumes contained between 15,000 to 16,000 entries. After a long interval the lexicon of Lower Sorbían was gathered in two dictionaries aimed at learners in schools: Manfred Starosta's Dolnoserbsko-nëmski stownik/Nieder sorbisch-deutsches Wörterbuch (Bautzen /Budysïn, 1985) and Klaus-Peter Jannasch's [=Pëts JanaS] Deutsch-niedersorbisches Wörterbuch/N ëmsko-dolnoserbski stownik (Bautzen/ Budysin, 1990), each with 16,000 and 19,000 entries, respectively.

Manfred Starosta, a senior researcher at the Sorbían Institute in Cottbus/Chosebuz, intended the present publication five years earlier. But even with the delay his work is still incomplete and largely ignores derivational categories like negation, verbal nouns and participles. Shortage of time as well as lack of personnel made it impossible to produce a thesaurus of all Sorbían written texts. The dictionary contains 45,000 entries and is aimed primarily at persons who wish to achieve as complete a comprehension as possible of texts written in Lower Sorbían. For this reason, Starosta decided to include German loanwords, hybrid formations, and regional vocabulary. Since there exist no reliable stylistic and sociolinguistic studies of Lower Sorbían, he made sparing use of lexical markings, such as lit ("literary"), poet ("poetical"), umg ("colloquial"), dial ("dialectal") or Os ("Upper Sorbianism"). Perhaps the most attractive feature in a dictionary of this size is the inclusion of a large number of idiomatic expressions and phraseologisms. And, in the tradition of the above-named college dictionaries by Starosta (1985) and Janas (1990), the present publication includes, as prefatory material (pp. 22-61), tables and rules for declension, conjugation, and comparison. These are numbered consecutively from 1-106, and each individual verb, noun, and adjective in the body of the dictionary itself contains a reference to one or more of these tables or rules. For someone seeking to write in Lower Sorbían these reference markers are an invaluable aid in looking up irregular forms; they reduce the need to consult a separate grammar of the language. The dictionary thus retains all the features of a learner's dictionary but falls short as an encyclopedic dictionary.

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Book Reviews 423

Does the dictionary fulfil its promise to ensure a maximal decoding of Lower Sorbían texts? My survey of approximately one page of a sociolinguistic study, translated into Lower Sorbían by the author of this dictionary {Rozhlad 49: 1 2 [1999]: 442), revealed that the following items are not found in the dictionary: powoblicenje "calculation" (the non-prefixed form woblicenje with the same meaning is given); napsasowanje "interview" (although napsasowaf "interviewer" is there); sociolinguistiski "sociolinguistic"; and njemëscanski "non-urban, rural"

(predictably, mëscanski "urban" is listed). For one particular passive participle, dojspity "achieved, obtained," which is not listed, with the corresponding infinitive dojspis "to achieve, obtain," the grammatical reference number 79 would put this verb in the class zatopis "to drown" or zapalis "to light"; the resulting past passive participle would be incorrect *dojspjony (the same reference was given in Starosta's earlier [1985] dictionary). It thus becomes apparent that the user of this dictionary must be sufficiently trained as a linguist in order to relate the missing forms to corresponding verbal nouns, non-prefixed formations, and non-negated stems.

It is probable that the appearance of this dictionary will slow down language loss. Due to its sparing references to the variable of language variation, the publication will no doubt generate a vigorous debate among language teachers, learners and planners concerning what needs to be included in a thesaurus of the contemporary lexical stock of Lower Sorbían. What is important at this stage in the development of Lower Sorbian is to regain some, if not all of the forgotten lexical stock. And Starosta's dictionary will serve this purpose very well.

Finally, a word about orthography needs to be said. In 1995, the Lower Sorbian Language Commission decided to re-introduce the grapheme ó (discontinued in 1952) as an orthographic aid to know when to pronounce [y], [e], or [ó]. The new ruling is explained on p. 19 of the dictionary and is obligatory only in dictionaries, grammars, and textbooks.

Gunter Schaarschmidt, University of Victoria

Evgeny Steiner. Stories for Little Comrades: Revolutionary Artists and the Making of Early Soviet Children's Books. Trans. J.A. Miller. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999. xv, 214 pp. Notes. Index. $30.00, cloth.

Begun in 1989 and expanded in 1994, Evgeny Steiner's Stories For Little Comrades is a fascinating study of Soviet children's books between the October Revolution and the formal adoption of Socialist Realism. Lavishly illustrated, the photographs alone make it worthwhile for any scholar of Russian history or art to pick up this book.

Steiner begins by describing the artistic language that was developed after the Bolshevik Revolution as artists sought to mould a new type of citizen and replace the iconography of the Tsarist period. Artists, some of them very prominent, were also attracted to the production of children's books because it was still possible to earn a living in this field while the overall art market collapsed. The authors and illustrators

Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavistes Vol. XLII, No. 3, September 2000

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