| Also Known As: Old Prussian
Description:
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 “Prūsiskan” (Prussian) or “Prūsiskai Bilā” (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..... full article at Wikipedia |
