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Old Prussian was a Western Baltic language belonging to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European languages, which was once spoken by the Old Prussians, the Baltic peoples of the Prussian region. The language is called Old Prussian to avoid confusion with the German dialects of Low Prussian and High Prussian and with the adjective Prussian as it relates to the later German state. Old Prussian began to be written down in the Latin alphabet in about the 13th century, and a small amount of literature in the language survives.

Old Prussian
Prūsiskai[1]
Catechism in Old Prussian from 1545
Region	Prussia
Ethnicity	Baltic Prussians
Extinct	Early 18th century[2]
Revival	Attempted revival, with 50 L2 speakers (no date)[3]
Language family	Indo-European Balto-Slavic Baltic Western Baltic Old Prussian
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	prg
Glottolog	prus1238
Linguasphere	54-AAC-a
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History

Original territory

In addition to Prussia proper, the original territory of the Old Prussians may have included eastern parts of Pomerelia (some parts of the region east of the Vistula River). The language may also have been spoken much further east and south in what became Polesia and part of Podlasie, before conquests by Rus and Poles starting in the 10th century and the German colonisation of the area starting in the 12th century.^{[citation needed]}

Relation to other languages

Old Prussian was closely related to the other extinct Western Baltic languages, namely Curonian, Galindian[4] and Sudovian. It is related to the Eastern Baltic languages such as Lithuanian and Latvian, and more distantly related to Slavic. Compare the words for "land": Old Prussian semmē, Latvian: zeme and Lithuanian: žemė, Russian: земля́ (zemljá).

Old Prussian had cognates with Slavic languages (e.g., Old Prussian curtis "hound", like Lithuanian kùrtas and Latvian kur̃ts, cognate with Slavic (compare Ukrainian: хорт, khort; Polish: chart; Czech: chrt)), as well as a few borrowings from Germanic, including from Gothic (e.g., Old Prussian ylo "awl" as with Lithuanian ýla, Latvian īlens) and from Scandinavian languages.[5]

Decline

With the conquest of the Old Prussian territory by the Teutonic Knights in the 13th century, and the subsequent influx of Polish, Lithuanian and especially German speakers, Old Prussian experienced a 400-year-long decline as an "oppressed language of an oppressed population".[6] Groups of people from Germany, Poland,[7][8] Lithuania, Scotland,[9] England,[10] and Austria (see Salzburg Protestants) found refuge in Prussia during the Protestant Reformation and thereafter. Old Prussian ceased to be spoken probably around the beginning of the 18th century,[2] because many of its remaining speakers died in the famines and the bubonic plague outbreak which harrowed the East Prussian countryside and towns from 1709 until 1711.[11]

Influence on other languages

The Germanic regional dialect of Low German spoken in Prussia (or East Prussia), called Low Prussian (cf. High Prussian, also a Germanic language), preserved a number of Baltic Prussian words, such as kurp, from the Old Prussian kurpi, for shoe in contrast to common Low German Schoh (standard German Schuh).^{[citation needed]}

Until the 1938 renaming of East Prussian placenames, Old Prussian river- and place-names, such as Tawe and Tawellningken, could still be found.[12]^{[citation needed]}

One of the hypotheses regarding the origin of mazurzenie – a phonological merger of dentialveolar and postalveolar sibilants in many Polish dialects – states that it originated as a feature of Polonized Old Prussians in Masuria (see Masurian dialect) and spread from there.[13][14][15][16]

Revitalization

A few linguists and philologists are involved in reviving a reconstructed form of the language from Luther's catechisms, the Elbing Vocabulary, place names, and Prussian loanwords in the Low Prussian dialect of German. Several dozen people use the language in Lithuania, Kaliningrad, and Poland, including a few children who are native speakers.[17]

The Prusaspirā Society has published their translation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince. The book was translated by Piotr Szatkowski (Pīteris Šātkis) and released in 2015.[17] The other efforts of Baltic Prussian societies include the development of online dictionaries, learning apps and games. There also have been several attempts to produce music with lyrics written in the revived Baltic Prussian language, most notably in the Kaliningrad Oblast by the bands Romowe Rikoito,[18] Kellan[19] and Āustras Laīwan, as well as in Lithuania by Kūlgrinda in their 2005 album Prūsų Giesmės (Prussian Hymns),[20] and Latvia by Rasa Ensemble in 1988[21] and Valdis Muktupāvels in his 2005 oratorio "Pārcēlātājs Pontifex" featuring several parts sung in Prussian.[22]

Important in this revival was Vytautas Mažiulis, who died on 11 April 2009, and his pupil Letas Palmaitis [lt], leader of the experiment and author of the website Prussian Reconstructions.[23] Two late contributors were Pranciškus Erelis [lt] (Prāncis Arellis) in Lithuania, and Dailonis Rusiņš (Dailūns Russinis) in Latvia. After them, Twankstas Glabbis from Kaliningrad oblast and Nērtiks Pamedīns from Warmia-Mazuria actively joined.^{[citation needed]}

Grammar

This section does not cite any sources. (April 2022)

With other remains being merely word lists, the grammar of Old Prussian is reconstructed chiefly on the basis of the three Catechisms. There is no consensus on the number of cases that Old Prussian had, and at least four can be determined with certainty: nominative, genitive, accusative and dative, with different suffixes. There are traces of a vocative case, such as in the phrase O Deiwe Rikijs "O God the Lord", reflecting the inherited PIE vocative ending *-e. There was a definite article (stas m., sta f. = štas, šta, with s due to German orthography); three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), and two numbers (singular and plural). Declensional classes were a-stems, ā-stems (feminine), ē-stems (feminine), i-stems, u-stems, ī/jā-stems, jā/ijā-stems and consonant-stems. The final -n is now lost in Eastern Baltic languages. Present, future and past tense are attested, as well as optative forms (used with imperative or permissive forms of verbs), infinitive, and four participles (active/passive present/past).

Phonology

The following description is based on the phonological analysis by Schmalstieg (1974):

Consonants

		Labial		Dental/ Alveolar		Post- alveolar		Velar		Glottal
		plain	pal.	plain	pal.	plain	pal.	plain	pal.
Plosive	voiceless	p	pʲ	t	tʲ			k	kʲ
	voiced	b	bʲ	d	dʲ			ɡ	ɡʲ
Fricative	voiceless	f*		s	sʲ	(ʃ)	(ʃʲ)			h*
	voiced	v	vʲ	z	zʲ	(ʒ)	(ʒʲ)
Nasal		m	mʲ	n	nʲ
Trill				r	rʲ
Approximant				l	lʲ	j

• Palato-alveolar fricatives /ʃ, ʒ/ are recorded as well, usually with the German orthography-style sch.
• There is said to have existed palatalization (i.e. [tʲ, dʲ]) among nearly all of the consonant sounds except for /j/, and possibly for /ʃ/ and /ʒ/.
• The sounds /f/ and /h/ also existed in Old Prussian, but are disputed as to whether they are native to the language as they are non native to Lithuanian and Latvian.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i iː		u uː
Mid	eː		oː
Low		a aː

Diphthongs

	Front	Back
Mid	ei
Open	ai	au

• /au/ may have also been realized as a mid-back diphthong [eu].

Sample texts

Versions of the Lord's Prayer

Lord's Prayer after Simon Grunau (Curonian-Latvian)

Lord's Prayer after Prätorius (Curonian-Latvian)[24][lower-alpha 1]

Lord's Prayer in Old Prussian (from the so-called "1st Catechism")

Lord's Prayer in Lithuanian dialect of Insterburg (Prediger Hennig)

Lord's Prayer in Lithuanian dialect of Nadruvia, corrupted (Simon Praetorius)[26]

A list of remains of Old Prussian

• Prussian-language geographical names within the territory of (Baltic) Prussia. Georg Gerullis undertook the first basic study of these names in Die altpreußischen Ortsnamen ("The Old Prussian Place-names"), written and published with the help of Walter de Gruyter, in 1922.
• Prussian personal names.[27]
• Separate words found in various historical documents.
• Vernacularisms in the German dialects of East and West Prussia, as well as words of Old Curonian origin in Latvian and West-Baltic vernacularisms in Lithuanian.
• The so-called Basel Epigram, the oldest written Prussian sentence (1369).[28][29] It reads:

Kayle rekyse thoneaw labonache thewelyse Eg koyte poyte nykoyte pênega doyte	Cheers, Sir! You are no longer a good little comrade if you want to drink (but) do not want to give a penny!

This jocular inscription was most probably made by a Prussian student studying in Prague (Charles University); found by Stephen McCluskey (1974) in manuscript MS F.V.2 (book of physics Questiones super Meteororum by Nicholas Oresme), fol. 63r, stored in the Basel University library.

• Various fragmentary texts:
  Recorded in several versions by Hieronymus Maletius in Sudovian Nook in the middle of the 16th century, as noted by Vytautas Mažiulis, are:
  1. Beigeite beygeyte peckolle ("Run, run, devils!")
  2. Kails naussen gnigethe ("Hello our friend!")
  3. Kails poskails ains par antres – a drinking toast, reconstructed as Kaīls pas kaīls, aīns per āntran ("A cheer for a cheer, a tit for tat", literally: "A healthy one after a healthy one, one after another!")
  4. Kellewesze perioth, Kellewesze perioth ("A carter drives here, a carter drives here!")
  5. Ocho moy myle schwante panicke – also recorded as O hoho Moi mile swente Pannike, O ho hu Mey mile swenthe paniko, O mues miles schwante Panick ("Oh my dear holy fire!")
• A manuscript fragment of the first words of the Pater Noster in Prussian, from the beginning of the 15th century: Towe Nüsze kås esse andangonsün swyntins.
• 100 words (in strongly varying versions) of the Vocabulary by friar Simon Grunau (Simon Grunovius), a historian of the Teutonic Knights, written c. 1517–1526 in his Preussische Chronik. Apart from those words Grunau also recorded an expression sta nossen rickie, nossen rickie ("This (is) our lord, our lord").
• The so-called Elbing Vocabulary, which consists of 802 thematically sorted words and their German equivalents. Peter Holcwesscher from Marienburg copied the manuscript around 1400; the original dates from the beginning of the 14th or the end of the 13th century. It was found in 1825 by Fr Neumann among other manuscripts acquired by him from the heritage of the Elbing merchant A. Grübnau; it was thus dubbed the Codex Neumannianus.
• The three Catechisms[30] printed in Königsberg in 1545, 1545, and 1561 respectively. The first two consist of only six pages of text in Old Prussian – the second one being a correction^{[clarification needed]} of the first into another Old Prussian dialect. The third catechism, or Enchiridion, consists of 132 pages of text, and is a translation of Luther's Small Catechism by a German cleric called Abel Will, with his Prussian assistant Paul Megott. Will himself knew little or no Old Prussian, and his Prussian interpreter was probably illiterate, but according to Will spoke Old Prussian quite well. The text itself is mainly a word-for-word translation, and Will phonetically recorded Megott's oral translation. Because of this, the Enchiridion exhibits many irregularities, such as the lack of case agreement in phrases involving an article and a noun, which followed word-for-word German originals as opposed to native Old Prussian syntax.
• Commonly thought of as Prussian, but probably actually Lithuanian (at least the adage, however, has been argued to be genuinely West Baltic, only an otherwise unattested dialect[31]):
  1. An adage of 1583, Dewes does dantes, Dewes does geitka: the form does in the second instance corresponds to Lithuanian future tense duos ("will give")
  2. Trencke, trencke! ("Strike! Strike!")
• Colophons written by Prussian scriptors who worked in Prague and in the court of Lithuanian duke Butautas Kęstutaitis.
• The "Trace of Crete", a short poem added by a Baltic writer in Chania to a manuscript of the Logica Parva by Paul of Venice.[32][33]

Atonaige maian meilan am ne wede maianwargan Thaure ne ʃtonais po pieʃ pievʃʃenabdolenai galei ragai Stonais po leipen zaidiant acha peda bete medde	Stand under the May tree willingly/dear – the May tree does not bring you to misery Aurochs, do not stand under the pine tree – horns bring death, Stand under the blooming linden tree – the bee brings honey here.

See also

• Low Prussian dialect
• Masurian dialect

Notes

References

Literature

• Georg Heinrich Ferdinand Nesselmann, Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der preußischen Sprache, 2. Beitrag: Königsberg, 1871.
• Georg Heinrich Ferdinand Nesselmann, Thesaurus linguae Prussicae, Berlin, 1873.
• E. Berneker, Die preussische Sprache, Strassburg, 1896.
• R. Trautmann, Die altpreussischen Sprachdenkmäler, Göttingen, 1910.
• Wijk, Nicolaas van, Altpreussiche Studien : Beiträge zur baltischen und zur vergleichenden indogermanischen Grammatik, Haag, 1918.
• G. Gerullis, Die altpreussischen Ortsnamen, Berlin-Leipzig, 1922.
• G. Gerullis, Georg: Zur Sprache der Sudauer-Jadwinger, in Festschrift A. Bezzenberger, Göttingen 1927
• R. Trautmann, Die altpreussischen Personnennamen, Göttingen, 1925.
• J. Endzelīns, Senprūšu valoda. – Gr. Darbu izlase, IV sēj., 2. daļa, Rīga, 1982. 9.-351. lpp.
• L. Kilian: Zu Herkunft und Sprache der Prußen Wörterbuch Deutsch–Prußisch, Bonn 1980
• J. S. Vater: Die Sprache der alten Preußen Wörterbuch Prußisch–Deutsch, Katechismus, Braunschweig 1821/Wiesbaden 1966
• J. S. Vater: Mithridates oder allgemeine Sprachenkunde mit dem Vater Unser als Sprachprobe, Berlin 1809
• (In Lithuanian) V. Mažiulis, Prūsų kalbos paminklai, Vilnius, t. I 1966, t. II 1981.
• W. R. Schmalstieg, An Old Prussian Grammar, University Park and London, 1974.
• W. R. Schmalstieg, Studies in Old Prussian, University Park and London, 1976.
• V. Toporov, Prusskij jazyk: Slovar', A – L, Moskva, 1975–1990 (not finished).
• V. Mažiulis, Prūsų kalbos etimologijos žodynas, Vilnius, t. I-IV, 1988–1997.
• M. Biolik, Zuflüsse zur Ostsee zwischen unterer Weichsel und Pregel, Stuttgart, 1989.
• R. Przybytek, Ortsnamen baltischer Herkunft im südlichen Teil Ostpreussens, Stuttgart, 1993.
• M. Biolik, Die Namen der stehenden Gewässer im Zuflussgebiet des Pregel, Stuttgart, 1993.
• M. Biolik, Die Namen der fließenden Gewässer im Flussgebiet des Pregel, Stuttgart, 1996.
• G. Blažienė, Die baltischen Ortsnamen in Samland, Stuttgart, 2000.
• R. Przybytek, Hydronymia Europaea, Ortsnamen baltischer Herkunft im südlichen Teil Ostpreußens, Stuttgart 1993
• A. Kaukienė, Prūsų kalba, Klaipėda, 2002.
• V. Mažiulis, Prūsų kalbos istorinė gramatika, Vilnius, 2004.
• LEXICON BORVSSICVM VETVS. Concordantia et lexicon inversum. / Bibliotheca Klossiana I, Universitas Vytauti Magni, Kaunas, 2007.
• OLD PRUSSIAN WRITTEN MONUMENTS. Facsimile, Transliteration, Reconstruction, Comments. / Bibliotheca Klossiana II, Universitas Vytauti Magni / Lithuanians' World Center, Kaunas, 2007.
• (In Lithuanian) V. Rinkevičius, Prūsistikos pagrindai (Fundamentals of Prussistics). 2015.

External links

• Database of the Old Prussian Linguistic Heritage (Etymological Dictionary of Old Prussian (in Lithuanian) and full textual corpus)
• Frederik Kortlandt: Electronic text editions (contains transcriptions of Old Prussian manuscript texts)
• M. Gimbutas Map Western Balts-Old Prussians
• Vocabulary by a friar Simon Grunau
• Elbing Vocabulary

На других языках

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[de] Altpreußische Sprache

Die altpreußische Sprache (Eigenbezeichnung: prūsiska-) ist eine ausgestorbene baltische Sprache, die von den Prußen gesprochen wurde. Sie steht als bekannteste Vertreterin des westbaltischen Zweigs den ostbaltischen Sprachen gegenüber, zu denen das heutige Litauisch und Lettisch gehören. Das Altpreußische gilt noch mehr als das Litauische als eine der indogermanischen Sprachen, die besonders archaische Züge bewahrt haben.

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- [en] Old Prussian language

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[es] Idioma prusiano antiguo

El prusiano antiguo es una lengua báltica extinta, hablada por los habitantes de la zona que posteriormente se llamó Prusia Oriental (hoy repartida entre Polonia, Lituania y la región rusa de Kaliningrado) antes de las colonizaciones alemana y polaca del siglo XIII. Después de esta colonización, se empezó a hablar un dialecto del bajo alemán oriental, llamado también prusiano, por lo que es conveniente no confundirlos. En la región lituana de Klaipėda existe un grupo de personas que intenta revivir una versión reconstruida de este idioma báltico.

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[fr] Vieux-prussien

Le vieux-prussien ou borusse est une langue appartenant au groupe balte des langues indo-européennes, pratiquement éteinte à la suite de la conquête des chevaliers teutoniques, à la minorisation des Vieux-Prussiens et à leur assimilation successive. Néanmoins, avant 1945, il subsistait, au sein du dialecte régional de Prusse orientale des mots issus du vieux-prussien.

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[it] Lingua prussiana

L'antico prussiano (wâr[an] Prûsiskan), o semplicemente prussiano, era una lingua baltica occidentale parlata nella Prussia Orientale. Dalla fine del Seicento è una lingua estinta.

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[ru] Прусский язык

Пру́сский язы́к — вымерший язык пруссов, один из балтийских языков (западно-балтийская группа). Иногда также называется древнепрусским (нем. Altpreußische Sprache, англ. Old Prussian) для отличия от прусских говоров немецкого языка.

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