[4] Historically, the languages have also been known as Wendish (named after the Wends, the earliest Slavic people in modern Poland and Germany) or Lusatian.

[1][2][3] After the settlement of the formerly Germanic territories (the part largely corresponding to the former East Germany)[3] by the Slavic ancestors of the Sorbs in the 5th and 6th centuries CE,[2] the Sorbian language (or its predecessors) had been in use in much of what was the southern half of Eastern Germany for several centuries.

The language still had its stronghold in (Upper and Lower) Lusatia,[2] where it enjoys national protection and fostering to the present day.

For people living in the medieval Northern Holy Roman Empire and its precursors, especially for the Saxons, the Wends (Wende) were heterogeneous groups and tribes of Slavic peoples living near Germanic settlement areas, in the area west of the River Oder, an area later entitled Germania Slavica, settled by the Polabian Slav tribes in the north and by others, such as the Sorbs and the Milceni, further south (see Sorbian March).

[6] According to some researchers the archaeological data cannot confirm the thesis about a single linguistic group yet supports the claim about two separated ethno-cultural groups with different ancestry whose respective territories correspond to Tornow-type ceramics (Lower Sorbian language) and Leipzig-type ceramics (Upper Sorbian language),[7] both derivations of Prague culture.

In Germany, Upper and Lower Sorbian are officially recognized and protected as minority languages.

To the north, the city of Cottbus/Chóśebuz is considered the cultural centre of Lower Sorbian; there, too, bilingual signs are found.

Also, there is no strong written tradition and there is not a broadly accepted formal standardized form of the language(s).

[12] Both Upper and Lower Sorbian have the dual for nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and verbs; very few living Indo-European languages retain this as a productive feature of the grammar.