Old Prussian language

From Free net encyclopedia

{{Infobox Language |name=Old Prussian |nativename=Prūsiska Bila |familycolor=Indo-European |states=East Prussia |extinct=End of 17th century |fam1=Indo-European |fam2=Baltic |fam3=Eastern Baltic |iso2=bat|iso3=prg}}

Old Prussian is an extinct Baltic language spoken by the inhabitants of the area that later became East Prussia (now in north-eastern Poland, Lithuania and the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia) prior to Polish and German colonization of the area beginning in the 13th century. An experimental community involved in reviving a reconstructed form of the language now exists in the Klaipėda region of Lithuania.

Old Prussian is closely related to the other extinct western Baltic languages, Galindan (formerly spoken in the territory to the south) and Sudovian (to the east). It is more distantly related to the surviving eastern Baltic languages, Lithuanian and particularly Latvian.

The Aesti, mentioned by Tacitus in his Germania, may have been a people who spoke Old Prussian. Tacitus describes them as being just like the other Suebi (who were a group of Germanic peoples) but with a more Britannic (Celtic) language.

A 16th century Warmian Prince-Bishop, Marcin Kromer, said the language of the Prussians was totally different from Slavic.

During the Reformation and thereafter, other groups of people from Poland, Lithuania, France, and Austria found refuge in Prussia. These new immigrants caused a slow decline in the use of Old Prussian as Prussians began to adopt the languages of the newcomers. Old Prussian probably ceased to be spoken around the end of the 17th century with the Great Plague.

It is called “Old Prussian” to avoid confusion with the adjective “Prussian”, which relates also 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 from the later state. Old Prussian began to be written down in about the 14th century. A small amount of literature in the language survives.

[edit]

Monuments

The monuments of Old Prussian are:

1 – Prussian geographical names within the territory of Baltic Prussia (the first basic study of these names was by Georg Gerullis, Die altpreußischen Ortsnamen. Berlin und Leipzig, 1922) [ON];

2 – Prussian personal names (up to now the main research is of Reinhold Trautmann, Die altpreußischen Personennamen. Göttingen, 1923, in which the work of Ernst Lewy, 1904, is included) [APN];

3 – separate words found in various historical documents [DK];

4 – vernacularisms in former German dialects of East and West Prussia, as well words of the Old Curonian origin in Latvian and West-Baltic vernacularisms in Lithuanian and Belorussian [DIA];

5 – so called Basel Epigram Kayle rekyse. thoneaw labonache thewelyse. Eg. koyte poyte. nykoyte. pe^nega doyte (this may be: Kaīls rikīse! Tu ni jāu laban asei tēwelise, ik kwaitēi pōiti, ni kwaitēi peningā dōiti ”Hello Sir! Thou already art not a good uncle if thou wilt trink but doest not will give money”). This is an inscription of the 14th c., found by St. McCluskey in one of folios of the Basel university in 1974 [BPT];

6 – fragmentary texts a) recorded in several versions by Hieronymus Maletius in Sudovian Nook in the middle of the 16th c. – Beigeite beygeyte peckolle “Run, devils, run!”, Kails naussen gnigethe “Hello our friend!”, Kails poskails ains par antres (a drinking toast here reconstructed as Kaīls pas kaīls, aīns per āntran “A healthy one after a healthy one (one after another)!”, Kellewesze perioth/ Kellewesze perioth “A carter drives here, a carter drives here!”, O hoho Moi mile swente Pannike “Oh my dear holy fire!” [MBS]; b) an expresion from the list (F) of the Vocabulary of friar Simon Grunau, a historian of the German Order - sta nossen rickie, nossen rickie “This is our lord, our lord” [GrF];

7 – a manuscript fragment of the first words of Pater Noster from the beginning of the 15th c. Towe Nüsze kås esse andangonsün swyntins [TN];

8 – 100 words in strongly varying versions (A, C, F, G, H, cf. Bibliography, V. Mažiulis PKP II, 48, ftn. 7) of the Vocabulary by Simon Grunau of ca. 1517–1526 [Gr];

9 – so called Elbing Vocabulary consisting of 802 thematically sorted words and their German equivalents. This manuscript, copied by Peter Holcwesscher from Marienburg on the boundary of the 14th / 15th c., was found in 1825 by Fr. Neumann among other manuscripts acquired by him from the heritage of Elbing merchant A. Grübnau (“Codex Neumannianus”) [E];

10 – 11 - 12 - three Catechisms (I, II, III) printed in Königsberg in 1540, 1540 and 1561 respectively, of which two first consist only 6 pages of the Prussian text, the II being a correction of the I in an another sub-dialect, but the III one consists of 132 pages of the Prussian text and is a translation by Abel Will of Martin Luther’s Enchiridion.

An adage of 1583 – Dewes does dantes, Dewes does geitka [OT] may be not Prussian (the form does in the second instance corresponds to Lith. fut. duos ‘will give’). As for trencke/ trencke “Strike! Strike!” [MBS], it is Lithuanian, not Prussian with all probability.

[edit]