ABSTRACT
The West Slavonic Sorbian language belongs to the smallest independent European languages if we assess it by the number of speakers. The autochthonous territory of the Sorbs, Lusatia, lies in the middle of a German-speaking area in the east German states of Brandenburg and Saxony, which, in agreement with the subsidiary principle of the federal establishment of Germany, control matters of their culture and education. It is estimated that the share of Sorbian speakers in the so-called Sorbian habitation area in the state of Brandenburg is approximately 7% and in the bilingual part of Saxony it is 12%. Less than 1% of the total population of these states is Sorbian-speaking.
