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Old Prussian language
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Prussian is an extinct Baltic language, once spoken by the inhabitants of Prussia in an area (see map and article by Marija Gimbutas below) of what later became East Prussia (now north-eastern Poland and the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia) and eastern parts of Pomerelia (some parts of the region East of the Vistula river). It was also spoken much further east and south in what became Polesia and part of Podlasia with the conquests by Rus and Poles starting in the 10th century and by the German colonisation of the area which began in the 12th century.
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Encyclopedia
Prussian is an extinct Baltic language, once spoken by the inhabitants of Prussia in an area (see map and article by Marija Gimbutas below) of what later became East Prussia (now north-eastern Poland and the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia) and eastern parts of Pomerelia (some parts of the region East of the Vistula river). It was also spoken much further east and south in what became Polesia and part of Podlasia with the conquests by Rus and Poles starting in the 10th century and by the German colonisation of the area which began in the 12th century. In Old Prussian itself, the language was called “Prusiskan” (Prussian) or “Prusiskai Bila” (the Prussian language). According to Gimbutas, the entire area has thousands of river names that can be traced back to an original Baltic language, even though they have undergone slavicization.
A few experimental communities involved in reviving a reconstructed form of the language now exist in Lithuania, Poland, and other countries.
The Æsti, mentioned by Tacitus in his Germania, may have been a people who spoke Old Prussian. However, Tacitus describes them as being just like the Suebi (a group of Germanic peoples) but with a more Britannic-like (Celtic) language.
Old Prussian was closely related to the other extinct Western Baltic languages, Curonian and Sudovian. It is more distantly related to the surviving Eastern Baltic languages, Lithuanian and Latvian. Compare the Prussian word seme (zeme), the Latvian zeme, the Lithuanian žeme.
In addition to the German colonists, groups of people from Poland, Lithuania, France, Scotland, England and Austria found refuge in Prussia during the Protestant Reformation and thereafter. Such immigration caused a slow decline in the use of Old Prussian, as the Prussians adopted the languages of the others, particularly German, the language of the German government of Prussia. Baltic Old Prussian probably ceased to be spoken around the beginning of the 18th century due to many of its remaining speakers dying in the famines and bubonic plague epidemics harming the East Prussian countryside and towns from 1709 until 1711. The regional dialect of Low German spoken in Prussia (or East Prussia), Low Prussian, preserved a number of Baltic Prussian words, such as kurp, from the Old Prussian kurpi, for shoe (in contrast to the standard German Schuh).
The language is called “Old Prussian” to avoid confusion with the German dialects Low Prussian and High Prussian, and the adjective “Prussian”, which also relates to the later German state. The Old Prussian name for the nation, not being Latinized, was Prusa. This too may be used to delineate the language and the Baltic state from the later German state.
Old Prussian began to be written down in the Latin alphabet in about the 13th century. A small amount of literature in the language survives.
Until the 1930s, when the Nazi government began a program of Germanization, and 1945, when the Soviets annexed Prussia and made Old Prussian place-names illegal, one could find Old Prussian river and place names in East Prussia, like Tawe, Tawelle, and Tawelninken.
Monuments
A list of monuments of Old Prussian :
- Prussian-language geographical names within the territory of (Baltic) Prussia. The first basic study of these names was by Georg Gerullis, in Die altpreußischen Ortsnamen (The Old Prussian Place-names), written and published with the help of Walter de Gruyter, in 1922.
- Prussian personal names.
- Separate words found in various historical documents.
- Vernacularisms in the former German dialects of East and West Prussia, as well as words of Old Curonian origin in Latvian, and West-Baltic vernacularisms in Lithuanian and Belarusian.
- The so-called Basel Epigram. It reads: Kayle rekyse. thoneaw labonache thewelyse. Eg. koyte poyte. nykoyte. pe^nega doyte; which may be: Kails rikise! Tu ni jau laban asei tewelise, ik kwaitei poiti, ni kwaitei peninga doiti. (In English: "Hello Sir! You are no longer a nice uncle, if you want to drink but do not want to give a penny!") This is an inscription from the 14th century, most probably by a Prussian student studying in Prague, found by St. McCluskey in one of the folios at the Basel university in 1974.
- Various fragmentary texts:
- Recorded in several versions by Hieronymus Maletius in Sudovian Nook in the middle of the 16th century, as noted by V. Mažiulis, are
- Beigeite beygeyte peckolle - Run, run, devils!
- Kails naussen gnigethe - Hello our friend!
- Kails poskails ains par antres - (a drinking toast, reconstructed as Kails pas kails, ains per antran, or, in English : A healthy one after a healthy one, one after another!)
- Kellewesze perioth, Kellewesze perioth - A carter drives here, a carter drives here!
- 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!
- an expression from the list of the Vocabulary of friar Simon Grunau, an historian of the German Order: sta nossen rickie, nossen rickie, This (is) our lord, our lord.
- 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 by Simon Grunau, written ca. 1517–1526; these have been reconstructed into a more unified single system of spelling by V. Mažiulis.
- The so-called , which consists of 802 thematically sorted words and their German equivalents. This manuscript, copied by Peter Holcwesscher from Marienburg on the boundary of the 14th and 15th centuries, 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”. Again, the words have been reconstructed into a more unified single system of spelling by V. Mažiulis, a scholar and contributor to the revival of the Prussian language.
- The three Catechisms printed in the Prussian language in Königsberg in 1545, 1545, and 1561 respectively. The first two consist of only 6 pages text in Prussian — the second one being a correction of the first into another sub-dialect. The third one, however, consists of 132 pages of Prussian text, and is a translation by Abel Will of Martin Luther’s Enchiridion.
- An adage of 1583, Dewes does dantes, Dewes does geitka. This is, in all probability, not Prussian — the form does in the second instance corresponds to Lithuanian future tense duos ‘will give’ — however it is included in this list because it is commonly thought of as Prussian. As for trencke, trencke! (Strike! Strike!), it too is in all probability Lithuanian, not Prussian.
Examples of Prussian
Here are several basic Prussian phrases :
| Translation | Phrase |
|---|
| Prussian [language] | Prusiskan | | Hello | Kails | | Good morning | Kails Anksteinai | | Good-bye | Erdiw | | Thank you | Dinka | | How much? | Kelli? | | Yes | Ja | | No | Ni | | Where is the bathroom? | Kwei ast Spektastuba? | | (Generic toast) | Kails pas kails ains per antran | | Do you speak English? | Bilai tu Engliskan? |
Prussian was a highly inflected language, as can be seen from the declination of the demonstrative pronoun stas, "that". (Note that translators of the Teutonic Order frequently misused stas as an article for the word "the".)
| Case | m.sg. | f.sg. | n.sg. | m.pl. | f.pl. | n.pl. |
|---|
| Nominative | stas | stai | stan | stai | stas | stai |
|---|
| Genitive | stesse | stesses | stesse | steisan | steisan | steisan |
|---|
| Dative | stesmu | stessei | stesmu or stesma | steimans | steimans | steimans |
|---|
| Accusative | stan | stan | stan or sta | stans | stans | stans or stas |
|---|
Prussian also possessed a vocative case.
Literature
- G. H. F. Nesselmann, Thesaurus linguae Prussicae, Berlin, 1873.
- E. Berneker, Die preussische Sprache, Strassburg, 1896.
- R. Trautmann, Die altpreussischen Sprachdenkmäler, Göttingen, 1910.
- G. Gerullis, Die altpreussischen Ortsnamen, Berlin-Leipzig, 1922.
- R. Trautmann, Die altpreussischen Personnennamen, Göttingen, 1925.
- J. Endzelins, Senprušu valoda. – Gr. Darbu izlase, IV sej., 2. dala, Riga, 1982. 9.-351. lpp.
- V. Mažiulis, Prusu 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 (nebaigtas, not finished).
- V. Mažiulis, Prusu 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. Blažiene, Die baltischen Ortsnamen in Samland, Stuttgart, 2000.
- A. Kaukiene, Prusu kalba, Klaipeda, 2002.
- V. Mažiulis, Prusu kalbos istorine 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.
External links
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- (contains transcriptions of Old Prussian manuscript texts)
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