Wiktionary:About Polabian

The Polabian language is an extinct West Slavic language that was spoken by the Polabian Slavs in present-day northeastern Germany around the Elbe (Łaba/Laba/Labe in Slavic) river, from which derives its name (po Labe "unto Elbe"). By the 18th century Lechitic Polabian was in some respects markedly different from other Slavic languages, most notably in having a strong German influence. It was close to Pomeranian and Kashubian, and is attested only in a handful of manuscripts, dictionaries and various writings from the 17th and 18th centuries.

Transcription

The Polabian language did not have its own alphabet and was never written down properly. It was written down mainly by writers of German origin who tried to write down the Polabian words using the German alphabet which resulted in the fact that the records are often distorted. For this reason linguists decided to reconstruct the phonetics of the Polabian language and create a phonetic transcription, which more accurately corresponds to the pronunciation of the Polabian words.

Wiktionary uses the following transcription:

Upper case: A, Ă, Å, Ą, B, B́, C, Ć, Č, D, Ď, Ʒ, Ʒ́, E, Ė, Ĕ, F, G, Ǵ, H, Χ, Χ́, I, J, K, Ḱ, L, Ľ, M, Ḿ, N, Ń, O, Ö, Ǫ, P, Ṕ, R, Ŕ, S, Ś, Š, T, Ť, U, Ü, V, V́, Z, Ź, Ž

Lower case: a, ă, å, ą, b, b́, c, ć, č, d, ď, ʒ, ʒ́, e, ė, ĕ, f, g, ǵ, h, χ, χ́, i, j, k, ḱ, l, ľ, m, ḿ, n, ń, o, ö, ǫ, p, ṕ, r, ŕ, s, ś, š, t, ť, u, ü, v, v́, z, ź, ž

Diphthongs: ai̯, au̯, åi̯, åu̯, oi̯, üi̯

This transcription was used by Kazimierz Polański (exceptionally, he made several changes in the Polabian-English Dictionary: χ → x, i̯ → i, u̯ → u) and is currently the most popular transcription. Other, less popular transcriptions also exist. Whenever possible, provide alternative transcriptions of the word, for example see brącai̯kă.

	Polański (and Sehnert)	Spławiński	Trubetzkoy	Olesch	Suprun
Reduced vowel (low)	ă	ə	ă	ă	ă
Reduced vowel (mid)	ĕ	ĕ	ə̆	ĕ	ĕ
Voiceless uvular fricative	χ (x)	χ	x	x	x

Headword

Some Polabian parts of speech have their own designated headword-line templates, which should precede the definition:

• Nouns have {{pox-noun}}, where the gender and animacy of the noun should be provided.
• Adjectives have {{pox-adj}}.
• Prepositions have {{pox-prep}}.
• Phrases have {{pox-phrase}}.

Other parts of speech should use a simple {{head}} template.

Etymology

Polabian words mostly derive from Proto-Slavic (sla-pro), the shared ancestor of among others Polish, Czech and Russian. Proto-Slavic, in turn, is the descendant of Proto-Balto-Slavic (ine-bsl-pro) and Proto-Indo-European (ine-pro). The entries of these words should contain the template {{inh+}}.

As such, the most basic etymology of a term like breză would look as follows:

===Etymology===
{{dercat|pox|ine-bsl-pro|ine-pro|inh=2}}
{{inh+|pox|sla-pro|*berza}}. Cognates include {{cog|pl|brzoza}} and {{cog|cs|bříza}}.

However, many words are also borrowed from German, mainly Middle Low German (gml), or its dialects. The entries of these words should contain the template {{borrowed}}.

Compare the following etymology for šopăt:

===Etymology===
{{bor+|pox|gml|schapen}}.

If the ultimate source of the borrowing is unknown, equivalents in German languages should be given.