Old Prussian language

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Old Prussian

Spoken in

East Prussia
speaker no native speakers
Linguistic
classification
Official status
Official language in nv
Language codes
ISO 639 -1

-

ISO 639 -2

asked

ISO 639-3

prg

The Old Prussian language was a West Baltic language within the Indo-European language family that was spoken by the Prussians . It is called prūsiska- in Old Prussian . Some Indo-Europeanists judge the structure of Old Prussian as particularly archaic and close to the assumed original language of Indo-European . The West Baltic Old Prussian is related to the East Baltic languages , to which today's Lithuanian and Latvian belong.

Original situation

Old Prussian was spoken by the Prussians , a west Baltic tribe in what was later to become East Prussia - south-west Lithuania , Russia ( Kaliningrad ) and northern Poland ( Warmia and Masuria ). Due to the conquest, as a result of the war between Prussians and Knights of the Teutonic Knights, as well as partial membership of the Polish Crown, the Old Prussian language was pushed back and lost its speakers between the 13th and 17th centuries. The adaptation to German immigrants, and in some areas also Lithuanian and Polish immigrants, also had an influence.

The Old Prussian language became extinct as an independent language in the 17th century, as more and more East Prussian dialects of East Low German and East Central German or Masurian and Lithuanian (cf. Prussian-Lithuania ) were used. There are communities in Lithuania, Poland and other countries that are campaigning for the revival of Old Prussian.

Lore

Old Prussian is only available in a few sources from the 14th to the 16th century. The most important are the Elbingen German-Prussian vocabulary and three catechisms . Old Prussian was recorded with the Latin alphabet, which does not adequately reproduce the Old Prussian pronunciation. The spelling of the texts did not follow any binding orthography.

The Basel epigram is the oldest Prussian as well as the oldest Baltic language monument and can be found in a codex from 1369.

Kayle rekyse. Thoneaw labonache thewelyse. Eg koyte poyte nykoyte penega doyte.
“For good, sir. You are not a good uncle. If you want to drink, you don't want to spend any money. "

This toast was discovered as a marginal note in a manuscript written in Latin in the Basel university library. The author was probably a Prussian student studying in Prague .

The Elbingen German-Prussian vocabulary contains 802 words sorted by subject group. The German words are written in a Middle East German dialect, the Old Prussian words are assigned to the Pomesan dialect. The vocabulary was written around 1400 and came into the possession of the city of Elbing in 1868 , but was lost in the Second World War . This is a copy of an older copy, which explains some errors. In particular, / t / and / c / are often confused. The word menig »moon« is interpreted as a prescription of an abbreviation that stood for * menius , which in turn probably reflects the correct * menins of the original, which also corresponds exactly to Latvian mēness, »moon«.

A word list comprising around 100 lexemes comes from the monk Simon Grunau from the period between 1517 and 1526. Since it is very flawed, it is used by research only with reservations.

The bilingual Old Prussian-German Lutheran catechism from 1545

From the time of the Reformation , three catechisms have been preserved that were created under Albrecht von Brandenburg-Ansbach . The translations of the Lutheran Catechism appeared in Konigsberg in 1545 (1st and 2nd catechism) and 1561 (3rd catechism). While the first and second catechisms come from unknown authors, for the third Catechism Abel Will , pastor at the Pobethen Church (Russian: Romanowo ) should be named as the author. This enchiridion is particularly important for research into Old Prussian because of the larger scope and the marking of intonation and accent relationships. The three catechisms are assigned to the Samland dialect. Particularly in the enchiridion, however, clear German influences are noticeable.

In addition to the three paternosters of these catechisms, the beginning of a fourth Old Prussian paternoster (15th century), discovered in 1938, is known. The allegedly old Prussian paternosters from other authors are either corrupt Latvian or Lithuanian.

The Sudauerbüchlein (16th century) contains several sayings from the folk tradition regarding weddings and the ritual of the dead. Before leaving her parents' house, the bride says goodbye to the domestic fire with the words: Ohow mey myle swennte panike! O my dear holy little one! When the carriage driver and the bride arrive at the groom's, the people shout : Kellewese perioth, the driver compt! Blindfolded, the bride is led to the front door and asked to push her open with her foot: drink, drink, push, push.

After being laid out, the deceased is addressed with: kayls naussen gingethe, I'll drink to you, our friend. At the funeral procession, ghosts are driven away with the words: coveted coveted peckolle, run run ir devil! and the toast to the memory of the year kayls posskayls eins peranters , which means "For the good and for the good, one after the other!"

These sayings are assigned to the Sudanese-Jatwing dialect. Since the Sudauerbüchlein is known in many copies and was also processed by Johannes Maletius , the sayings have been handed down in various, sometimes very rough, forms.

An old proverb can be found in Leonhard Thurneysser's Onomasticum from 1583:

Deves does dantes. Deves does geitka.
"God gives teeth, God gives bread."

This proverb corresponds to the well-known Lithuanian proverb: Dievas davė dantis. Dievas duos ir duonos. "God gave teeth, God will also give bread." It has been translated into Sanskrit , Latin and ancient Greek since the 18th century to demonstrate the Indo-European kinship of the Baltic.

Individual terms and glosses come from various documents. Furthermore, the traditional name material, especially place names, is of great importance for the development of the language.

Dialects

Two dialects are easily accessible for the traditional Prussian: Pomesan and Samland . In phonetic terms are typical: pom. ē next to saml. ī ( sweta-: swīta- "world"); pom. ō , saml. ū after labial ( mōthe: mūti "mother") or pom. ō , saml. ā ( tōwis: tāws "father"; brōte: brāti "brother"), which is reflected in the nominative ending of the feminine ā-tribes ( crauyō: krawia "blood"). The nominative endings of the masculine o-stems are weakened in Pomesan to -is , in Samland syncopated ( deywis: deiws "God"). Vocabulary cases are pom. smoy , saml. wijrs "man"; pom. wayklis , saml. soūns "son" or pom. samien , saml. laucks "field". The neuter was more common in Pomesan than in Samland.

morphology

Nouns

In contrast to Latvian and Lithuanian , Old Prussian has a neutral gender of nouns. In addition to the three genera (masculine, feminine, neuter) there are two numbers (singular and plural) in Old Prussian, the dual is only tangible in residual forms. Not all case forms can be covered with the help of the corpus. The case forms that are clearly documented include: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and vocative. An instrumental as it is available in the East Baltic languages ​​cannot be clearly proven. There is no clear evidence for the existence of a locative.

Adjectives

Like Latvian and Lithuanian, Old Prussian has 3 stems of indefinite adjectives. However, the present texts only have a small number of adjectives, so that an exact differentiation is hardly possible. Comparative forms can be found that have similarities to the Lithuanian forms. A complete assignment for all cases cannot be achieved with just one adjective.

Verbs

As with the other word classes, the determination of the verb forms is difficult and often cannot be constructed from the available materials. The three tenses present, past and future and the four modes indicative , imperative , optative , and conditional must be proven . As with the East Baltic languages, the forms for the 3rd person singular and plural are the same. There are reflexive and non-reflexive verb forms.

The infinitive endings -t, -twei, -tun can be deduced from the texts at hand.

Numerals

Cardinalia

German Old Prussian Lithuanian Latvian
one ains vienas viens
two dwai you divi
ten dessimpts dešimt therefore

Ordinalia

German Old Prussian Lithuanian Latvian
first pirmas pìrmas pear corn
second antars añtras otrais
third tīrts trẽčias trešais
fourth kettwirts ketviřtas ceturtais
fifth piēncts peñktas piektais
sixth uch šẽštas sestais
seventh septmas septintas septītais
eighth asmus aštuñtas astotais
ninth newīnts deviñtas devītais
tenth dessīmts dešimtas desmitais

Dialects influenced by Old Prussian

In 1924, Walther Ziesemer discovered that the Old Prussian language, apart from a large number of place and field names, had hardly left any linguistic influence on the German dialects of East Prussia. Only a few Prussian vocabulary was included in the chancellery language of the Teutonic Order, for example sweike workhorse, witing order servant of Prussian origin or pearl fee, due share. The last word was still in use in the 18th century. The vocabulary of the recent German dialects contained relatively few words of Prussian origin. Spread furthest were Margell "Girls" (except in Wroclaw's ) Kujel "boar" and Kaddig "juniper". Ziesemer limited himself to vocabulary. He did not ask whether the linguistic similarities between Low Prussian and High Prussian could be traced back to a Prussian substrate.

According to Reinhard Schmoeckel, the “broad tone” of the German dialects of East Prussia goes back to Old Prussian influence.

Protestant Poles from Masovia found refuge in the southern part of East Prussia , and so the Polish Masurian dialect developed there .

New Prussian

Since the 1980s there have been several attempts to reanimate Prussian as a new spoken language. In the meantime, dictionaries and grammars for various forms of the reconstructed (New) Prussian have been published. However, published texts are mostly limited to poems and songs. The advocates of New Prussian often use the name Prussian in German for their language.

Inspired by the book Only the name stayed by Heinrich Gerlach , the Tolkemita association was founded in Dieburg in 1980 , aiming to revive and maintain the old Prussian culture and language. The association was named after the birthplace of the monk Simon Grunau . This association, which was later followed by similar ones, can be seen as the impetus for the revival of the Prussian language. In 1985, Heinz Georg Podehl was the first to publish poems in a reconstructed New Russian language.

Günther Kraft-Skalwynas, the author of a New Russian grammar ( Grammatika nāun-prūsiskas billās , 1989), also publishes several poetic pieces. He was criticized by Letas Palmaitis that it was less Prussian than a " Baltic Esperanto " based on Latvian . Palmaitis, himself an advocate of the experimental and reconstructed Prussian, also published several texts in a New Russian idiom for the Brotherhood PRŪSA , based primarily on the scientific work of Vladimir Toporov and Vytautas Mažiulis. Mikkels Klussis, who published a dictionary of the reconstructed Pomesan dialect based on the three catechisms, takes a different approach. There are also other lesser-known attempts.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union , New Russia acquired a political dimension. At that time, ideas of a Baltic federation between Estonia , Latvia , Lithuania and the formerly Prussian Kaliningrad region were put forward, in which New Russian should be one of the official languages ​​of the “Canton of Borussia”.

reconstruction

Due to the relatively small text corpus that has survived, the Prussian grammar is reconstructed using methods of comparative linguistics . There are also attempts to create a New Russian language, the main aim of which is to expand the vocabulary. According to Vytautas Mažiulis, for example, it is assumed that a word must have existed in Prussian if it appears in Lithuanian, Latvian and Slavic. These attempts are (sometimes misleadingly) criticized by Balticists insofar as these attempts merely serve the practical needs of neo-pagan groups without making any claim to an academic reconstruction.

Letas Palmaitis made an important contribution to the Prussian language. In 2007 he published his scientific papers on the Prussian language: 1) Lexicon Borussicum Vetus. Concordantia et Lexicon Inversum. Bibliotheca Klossiana I, Universitas Vytauti Magni, Kaunas 2007; 2) Old Prussian written Monuments. Facsimile, Transliteration, Reconstruction, Comments. Bibliotheca Klossiana II, Universitas Vytauti Magni, Kaunas 2007.

See also

Wiktionary: Old Prussian  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

literature

  • Kristina Brazaitis: Johannes Bobrowski: Pruzzische Vokabeln: An Old Prussian Glossary . University of Otago, 2010, ISBN 978-0-9582716-5-3 .
  • Rainer Eckert, Elvira-Julia Bukevičiūtė, Friedhelm Hinze: The Baltic Languages: An Introduction . Langenscheidt, Leipzig 1994.
  • Jānis Endzelīns : Old Prussian grammar . Riga 1944.
  • Wolfram Euler: Old Prussian as a vernacular among the Indo-European and Baltic languages . Innsbruck contributions to linguistics, lectures and smaller writings 39, Innsbruck 1988, ISBN 3-85124-595-4 .
  • Vytautas Mažiulis: Prūsu̜ kalbos istorinė gramatika . Vilniaus Universiteto Leidykla, Vilnius 2004.
  • Vytautas Mažiulis: Prūsu̜ kalbos paminklai . Mokslas, Vilnius 1966/1981.
  • Vytautas Mažiulis: Prūsų kalbos etimologijos žodynas . Mokslas, Vol. 1–4, Vilnius 1997–1988 (Old Prussian etymological dictionary).
  • Ferdinand Nesselmann : Thesaurus linguae prussicae . Berlin 1873 ( digitized in the Open Library ).
  • Heinz Georg Podehl: 4444 East Prussian names declared in Prussian . Rautenberg, Leer 1987, ISBN 3-7921-0356-7 .
  • Vytautas Rinkevičius: Old Prussian. History - dialects - grammar . Edited by Harald Bichlmeier, translated by Harald Bichlmeier and Silke Brohm. Baar, Hamburg 2017, ISBN 978-3-935536-47-9 .
  • William R. Schmalstieg: Studies in Old Prussian . Pennsylvania 1976, ISBN 978-0-271-01231-5 .
  • Reinhold Trautmann : The old Prussian language monuments . Goettingen 1910.
  • Old Prussian Written Monuments. Facsimile, Transliteration, Reconstruction, Comments . Bibliotheca Klossiana II, Universitas Vytauti Magni Lithuanians' World Center, Kaunas 2007.

Web links

Wikisource: Old Prussian dictionaries  - sources and full texts
Test Wikipedia in Old Prussian

Old Prussian (only academic papers)

Borussica in general, reconstructed New Russian

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfram Euler: Old Prussian as a vernacular among the Indo-European and Baltic languages. Innsbruck contributions to linguistics, lectures and smaller publications 39. Innsbruck 1988, ISBN 3-85124-595-4 , p. 33
  2. ↑ Old Prussian Basel Epigram
  3. ^ Reinhold Trautmann: The old Prussian language monuments. Göttingen 1910, p. XXIII.
  4. ^ Vytautas Rinkevičius: Old Prussian. History - dialects - grammar . Baar, Hamburg 2017, pp. 31–96.
  5. ^ Vytautas Rinkevičius: Old Prussian. History - dialects - grammar . Baar, Hamburg 2017, pp. 97–119.
  6. ↑ Walther Ziesemer: The East Prussian dialects. Rehearsals and representation. Hirt, Breslau 1924, p. 116 ( digitized version ).
  7. ↑ Ziesemer, p. 134.
  8. ↑ Reinhard Schmoeckel : The Indo-Europeans: Awakening from Prehistory , full. revised and updated edition of the first in 1982 in Rowohlt-Verl. published work "The Shepherds Who Changed the World", 2nd edition, Bastei-Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1999, ISBN 3404641620 , p. 536: "Only the broad tone of the East Prussian German dialect was reminiscent of the foreign language, who helped shape this dialect. "
  9. ↑ Endre Bojtár: Foreword to the past. A Cultural History of the Baltic People. Budapest 1999, ISBN 963-9116-42-4 , p. 209.
  10. ↑ Heinz Georg Podehl: What is that, Prussian? In: Baltic Yearbook. 1985, pp. 162-164.
  11. ↑ Letas Palmaitis: Kraft Skalwynas G .: Grammatika prūsiskas kalbas, pobānda swaises ernausnas. For friends in the Tolkemita. In Baltistica , XXV / 2 (1989), p. 186.
  12. ↑ Tomas Venclova : Borusija - ketvirtoji Baltijos respublika? In Akiračiai , 1995/1, pp. 1-13.
  13. ↑ cf. prussian
  14. ↑ cf. Klussis M .: German-Prussian-German [Lexicon of experimental Prussian]. Bibliotheca Klossiana, Lingua Borussica Nova IIc, Lithuanians' World Center, Kaunas 2007.