Old Prussian language
Old Prussian was a West 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" redirects here. For the people, see Old Prussians.Old Prussian
Classification and relation to other languages[edit]
Old Prussian is an Indo-European language belonging to the Baltic branch. It is considered to be a Western Baltic language.
Old Prussian was closely related to the other extinct West Baltic languages, namely Sudovian, West Galindian[4] and possibly Skalvian and Old Curonian.[5]: 33 [6] Other linguists consider Western Galindian and Skalvian to be Prussian dialects.[7]: 15
It is related to the East Baltic languages such as Lithuanian and Latvian, and more distantly related to Slavic. Compare the words for 'land': Old Prussian semmē [zemē], Latvian: zeme, Lithuanian: žemė, Russian: земля́, (zemljá) and Polish: ziemia.
Old Prussian had loanwords from Slavic languages (e.g., Old Prussian curtis [kurtis] '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.[8]
Influence on other languages[edit]
Germanic[edit]
The Low German language spoken in Prussia (or West Prussia and East Prussia), called Low Prussian (cf. High Prussian, High German),[9] preserved a number of Baltic Prussian words, such as Kurp, from the Old Prussian kurpe, for shoe in contrast to common Low German: Schoh (Standard German Schuh),[10] as did the High Prussian Oberland subdialect.[11]
Until the 1938 changing of place names in East Prussia, Old Prussian river- and place-names, such as Tawe and Tawellningken, could still be found.[12][13][14]: 137
Polish[edit]
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 dialects) and spread from there.[15]
Dialects[edit]
The Elbing Vocabulary and the Catechisms display systematical differences in phonology, vocabulary and grammar. Some scholars postulate that this is due to them being recordings of different dialects:[17]: XXI–XXII
Pomesanian[7]: 25–89 and Sambian.[7]: 90–220
Phonetical distinctions are: Pom. ē is Samb. ī (sweta- : swīta- 'world'); Pom. ō, Samb. ū after a labial (mōthe [mōte] : mūti 'mother') or Pom. ō, Samb. ā (tōwis : tāws 'father'; brōte : brāti 'brother'), which influences the nominative suffixes of feminine ā-stems (crauyō [kraujō] : krawia 'blood'). The nominative suffixes of the masculine o-stems are weakened to -is in Pomesanian; in Sambian they are syncopated (deywis : deiws 'god').
Vocabulary differences encompass Pom. smoy [zmoy] (cf. Lith. žmuo) , Samb. wijrs 'man'; Pom. wayklis, Samb. soūns 'son' and Pom. samien, Samb. laucks [lauks] 'field'.
The neuter gender is more often found in Pomesianan than in Sambian.
Others argue that the Catechisms are written in a Yatvingized Prussian. The differences noted above could therefore be explained as being features of a different West Baltic language Yatvingian/Sudovian.[29]
Orthography[edit]
The orthography varies depending on the author. As the authors of many sources were themselves not proficient in Old Prussian, they wrote the words as they heard them using the orthographical conventions of their mother tongue. For example, the use of ⟨s⟩ for both /s/ and /z/ is based on German orthography. Additionally, the writers misunderstood some phonemes and, when copying manuscripts, they added further mistakes.[7]: 63 [8][16]: 337