The words "Prussia", "Prussians", "Prussian" are heard by history buffs. Both the king-soldier Frederick the Great and the drilled army are immediately remembered, according to Suvorov, more suitable for a parade than for battle. In the shadow of these historical figures and events, the Prussians themselves remain invisible - a medieval alliance of the Baltic tribes, conquered by the Teutonic Knights and exterminated during foreign colonization.

Who are the Prussians?

The peoples who lived on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea and mined valuable amber were well known to historians and geographers of ancient Greece and Rome. They were called Aestii.

The Germans also called these tribes. But Estonians and modern Estonians have little in common. Archaeologists have proved that in antiquity amber was mined only in a small area that surrounded the Sambia Peninsula, the modern Kaliningrad region.

In Estonia itself, amber finds are accidental. In the name of the Aestii, ancient authors called many different tribes, including the ancestors of the Prussians. Tacitus and Pliny the Elder knew about them only by hearsay, from merchants, and considered the Amber Land to be the boundary of the inhabited land. The origin of the name of the Prussians is shrouded in mystery. The first time it is found only in the 9th century in the form of Brusi in the draft of an anonymous merchant and later found in Polish and German chronicles. Linguists find analogies for it in many Indo-European languages ​​and believe that it goes back to the Sanskrit purusa, "man."

Life and customs

Since the time of Charlemagne, the tribes of the Prussians and Baltic Slavs have acquired a new neighbor on the border - a Christian kingdom. From there, missionary monks reached their lands, who not only tried to convert local residents to their faith, but also left us their ethnographic observations about the life of the Prussians.

Prussia for its time was quite densely populated and rich in fish, honey, furs, amber. There were no large cities in the lands of the Prussians, but small settlements were often found, fortified with a rampart, a moat and a palisade. Their inhabitants were engaged in crafts - fishing, hunting (especially in winter, for wild boars, deer, tours and fur-bearing animals), cattle breeding.

All medieval chroniclers noted the hospitality of the Prussians and their readiness to help the shipwrecked. Trade was an important source of income, through it linen fabrics, luxurious weapons, and jewelry came to Prussia. Prussian warriors, led by leaders, went on campaigns against Poland and Lithuanian lands. In the heyday, in the XII-XIII centuries, the territory of the union of the Prussian tribes stretched from the mouth of the Vistula to the mouth of the Neman. The attitude of the Prussians towards navigation and piracy in the Baltic is more mysterious, but it can be assumed that the most brave warriors sought service in the squads of the Vikings and Baltic Slavs.

Prussian language

In 1970, in the library of the University of Basel, on one of the pages of the medieval codex, a small entry was found, in which, as it turned out, the oldest known text in the Prussian language was preserved. This entry was made by a Prussian student at Charles University in Prague around 1369. Its text was far from scientific studies and read:

Kails rekyse Thoneaw labonache thewelyse

Eg koyte poyte Nykoyte pennega doyte.

which translates to:

Hello sir! You are a bad friend
if you want to drink, but you don't want to give money.

Apparently, the Prussian schoolboy, tired from his studies, wrote it on the page of the book to his friend, jokingly alluding to some recent drinking bout. Unfortunately, a small dictionary of the Prussian language and several books on it were created later, only in the 15th-16th centuries, and therefore the names of their leaders and history are known only in later legends and retellings of Prussian antiquity collectors. By this time, the Prussian language, under the influence of German and Polish, had already changed a lot and began to disappear. The last old man who knew him on the Curonian Spit died in 1677, and the plague of 1709-1711 destroyed the last Prussians in Prussia itself.

Religion and cults

The Prussians in medieval Europe were known as one of the most ardent pagans. Their religion was based on the worship of a pantheon of gods, the most significant of which were Perkuno (god of thunder and lightning), Patrimpo (god of youth, flowering, springs and rivers), Autrimpo (god of the sea) and Patollo (god of old age, the underworld).

The connection of Perkuno with the Slavic Perun and the Lithuanian Perkunas emphasizes the Indo-European community of Slavs and Balts. Participation in cult actions and rituals introduced a person to the sacred world. Priests played the main role in them, the most honorable of which was the high priest Krivo-Krivaitis, who had priests-vaidslots (Prussian "knowing" in Prussian) under his command.

Sanctuaries located in sacred groves and on hills served as places for performing rituals. Sacrifices, including human sacrifices, played an important role in the rituals. A goat was used as sacrificial animals (the villagers and cattle were sprinkled with its blood to increase fertility) and a horse that accompanied its owner to the grave. The cult of the white horse is associated with the legend of the brothers Bruten (high priest of the Prussians) and Videvut (prince) who made peace with the Slavs and sacrificed a white mare to the gods.

Since that time (according to legend, 550 AD), white horses were revered as sacred by the Prussians. The most significant and famous was the cult center of Romove, founded by Bruten and Videvut (modern village of Bochagi, Chernyakhovsky district, Kaliningrad region). In it, Prussian priests sacrificed captured crusader knights, raising them to the fire on horseback in full gear. In 997, one of the main Polish saints, the missionary Adalbert (Wojciech), was also sacrificed for daring to violate the boundaries of the sacred grove.

In 1981, archaeologists near the forest of Kunter, in the tract Okhsendresh, managed to discover a rounded sanctuary with an altar, built for a one-time sacrifice. This sanctuary is uniquely associated with the last hours of the life of a missionary (Kulakov). In the land of the Prussians, the preacher Bruno, known for his journey to Russia in 1007, also died. The military successes of the Prussians in the 12th century contributed to the veneration of the power of Krivo-Kriveitis by other Baltic peoples.

The disappearance of the Prussians

The wealth and fertility of the land attracted its neighbors - Germans, Poles and Lithuanians. The aggressiveness of the Prussian squads caused a desire to protect themselves. However, the main engine of the conquest of Prussia was the Teutonic Order, the fourth master of which Hermann von Salza received in 1230 from Pope Gregory IX a blessing for the baptism of Prussian pagans.

By 1283 the conquest of Prussia was complete. The flow of Catholic priests-preachers and colonial farmers from Germany, Poland, Lithuania, the Netherlands and France was even harder for the Prussians to cope with than with military conquest. Gradually, the local population loses its identity, forgets the language. In the 17th century, the Brandendurg-Prussian kings (Germans by origin) forbade local residents, under pain of prison or death, to collect amber on the seashore.

In German, "Boernstein", "burning stone", he was valued by them no less than by the aristocrats of ancient Rome. Instead of the Prussian history, the history of "Prussianism" and the kingdom of Prussia begins, the local population of which had little in common with the Baltic name of the Prussians.

Balto-Slavic branch Baltic languages ​​West Baltic group Writing :

most of history unwritten;
Latin alphabet (fixations of the XIV-XVI centuries)

Language codes ISO 639-1 : ISO 639-2: ISO 639-3: See also: Project:Linguistics

Prussian language- an extinct language of the Prussians, one of the Baltic languages ​​\u200b\u200b(Western Baltic group). Sometimes also called Old Prussian(German Altpreussische Sprache, English Old Prussian) to distinguish it from the Prussian dialects of German.

Dialects

Among the sources of the Prussian language that have come down to us is the Basel fragment accidentally discovered in the 1970s (XIV century, after 1369), which is considered the oldest Baltic text. This is a joking epigram, probably composed by a Prussian who studied at the Charles University in Prague:

Kails rekyse Thoneaw labonache thewelyse
Eg koyte poyte Nykoyte pennega doyte.

Usually the text is interpreted as follows: “Hello, sir! You are not a good comrade/priest(?) if you want to drink but don’t want to give money.”

Currently, in the Kaliningrad region, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, there is a movement associated with the name of Mikkels Klussis, to restore the (artificial) "new Prussian language" both on the basis of existing information about Prussian and taking into account the German dialects of Prussia, which, perhaps, preserved Prussian linguistic facts unknown from traditional sources.

Linguistic characteristic

Of the current living languages, the Prussian language is closest to the Lithuanian and Latvian languages.

In some respects, the Prussian language also reveals a special closeness to the Slavic languages: this includes common structural features in the field of morphology (in particular, nominal declension).

Phonetics and phonology

The phonetics of the Prussian language are characterized by:

• opposition of vowels by longitude-shortness;
• relatively simple consonant system;
• free stress;
• oppositions of intonations;
• palatalization and labilization of consonants;
• a mixture of hissing and whistling;
• diphthongization of long vowels;
• preservation di, ti, turning into hissing in Latvian and Lithuanian, but the transition si into a sizzling;
• the change of deaf and voiced - in some cases is associated with the perception of the Prussian language by the Germans.

Morphology

In morphology, five cases of the name are known (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and vocative). In the late period (to which the monuments belong), oblique cases were replaced by the constructions “preposition with the accusative”, and the vocative by the nominative. The Pomesanian dialect retained the neuter gender, which had been lost in Latvian and Lithuanian. The Prussian language had different bases of possessive pronouns from Latvian and Lithuanian. The catechisms present the definite and the indefinite article; the question of how much this is a living phenomenon of Prussian speech, and not a mechanical word-by-word tracing paper from German, is debatable. In the Prussian verb, tense forms are distinguished (present, past and future), there is an analytical perfect with the verb be(apparently a Prussian phenomenon proper), four moods, pledge. In Prussian, there was a lexicalized verb form of the Slavic type, in particular, a pure form prefix of the perfect form po(cf. Lithuanian pa-), but it is poorly documented in the sources.

Syntax

There is not enough information about the Prussian syntax (due to the fact that in the catechisms the word order in most cases exactly corresponds to the German original).

Vocabulary

The vocabulary contains borrowings from Slavic languages ​​(for example, dusi- "soul", swetan- "world", somukis- "castle") and Germanic ( adder- "or", werts- "worthy" penningas- "money").

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Notes

Links

• (Russian)
• (English)
• : Pomesanian and Samlandic dialects
• "" - the first newspaper in the Prussian language, founded in 1989.
• (Russian)

Oriental Western Dnieper-Oka

An excerpt characterizing the Prussian language

Anna Mikhailovna was the last to leave. She approached Pierre with quiet, slow steps.
“Pierre!…” she said.
Pierre looked at her questioningly. She kissed the young man's forehead, wetting him with her tears. She paused.
- II n "est plus ... [He was gone ...]
Pierre looked at her through his glasses.
- Allons, je vous reconduirai. Tachez de pleurer. Rien ne soulage, comme les larmes. [Come, I will accompany you. Try to cry: nothing relieves like tears.]
She led him into a dark living room and Pierre was glad that no one there saw his face. Anna Mikhaylovna left him, and when she returned, he put his hand under his head and slept soundly.
The next morning Anna Mikhailovna said to Pierre:
- Oui, mon cher, c "est une grande perte pour nous tous. Je ne parle pas de vous. Mais Dieu vous soutndra, vous etes jeune et vous voila a la tete d" une immense fortune, je l "espere. Le testament n "a pas ete encore ouvert. Je vous connais assez pour savoir que cela ne vous tourienera pas la tete, mais cela vous impose des devoirs, et il faut etre homme. [Yes, my friend, this is a great loss for all of us, not to mention you. But God will support you, you are young, and now you are, I hope, the owner of great wealth. The will has not yet been opened. I know you well enough and I'm sure it won't turn your head; but it imposes obligations on you; and you have to be a man.]
Pierre was silent.
- Peut etre plus tard je vous dirai, mon cher, que si je n "avais pas ete la, Dieu sait ce qui serait arrive. Vous savez, mon oncle avant hier encore me promettait de ne pas oublier Boris. Mais il n" a pas eu le temps. J "espere, mon cher ami, que vous remplirez le desir de votre pere. [Afterwards, I may tell you that if I had not been there, God knows what would have happened. You know that uncle of the third day promised me not to forget Boris, but I didn’t have time. I hope, my friend, you will fulfill your father’s wish.]
Pierre, not understanding anything and silently, blushing shyly, looked at Princess Anna Mikhailovna. After talking with Pierre, Anna Mikhailovna went to the Rostovs and went to bed. Waking up in the morning, she told the Rostovs and everyone she knew the details of the death of Count Bezukhy. She said that the count died the way she would have wished to die, that his end was not only touching, but also instructive; the last meeting between father and son was so touching that she could not remember it without tears, and that she did not know who behaved better in these terrible moments: whether the father, who remembered everything and everyone in such a way in the last minutes and such he said touching words to his son, or Pierre, whom it was a pity to look at how he was killed and how, despite this, he tried to hide his sadness so as not to upset his dying father. "C" est penible, mais cela fait du bien; ca eleve l "ame de voir des hommes, comme le vieux comte et son digne fils", [It's hard, but it's saving; the soul rises when one sees such people as the old earl and his worthy son,] she said. She also spoke about the actions of the princess and Prince Vasily, not approving them, but under great secrecy and whispering.

In Bald Mountains, the estate of Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky, every day they expected the arrival of young Prince Andrei with the princess; but the expectation did not disturb the orderly order in which life went on in the old prince's house. General anshef Prince Nikolai Andreevich, nicknamed in society le roi de Prusse, [King of Prussia,] since the time when Paul was exiled to the village, he lived without a break in his Bald Mountains with his daughter, Princess Marya, and with her companion, m lle Bourienne. [Mademoiselle Bourrienne.] And in the new reign, although he was allowed to enter the capitals, he also continued to live in the countryside without a break, saying that if anyone needs him, then he will reach a hundred and fifty miles from Moscow to the Bald Mountains, and that he nobody and nothing is needed. He said that there are only two sources of human vices: idleness and superstition, and that there are only two virtues: activity and intelligence. He himself was engaged in the education of his daughter and, in order to develop in her both main virtues, until the age of twenty he gave her lessons in algebra and geometry and distributed her whole life in uninterrupted studies. He himself was constantly busy either writing his memoirs, or calculations from higher mathematics, or turning snuff boxes on a machine tool, or working in the garden and observing the buildings that did not stop on his estate. Since the main condition for activity is order, order in his way of life was brought to the highest degree of accuracy. His exits to the table were made under the same constant conditions, and not only at the same hour, but also at the minute. With the people around him, from his daughter to his servants, the prince was harsh and invariably demanding, and therefore, without being cruel, he aroused fear and respect for himself, which the most cruel person could not easily achieve. Despite the fact that he was retired and now had no importance in state affairs, each head of the province where the prince's estate was, considered it his duty to appear to him and, just like an architect, gardener or Princess Mary, waited for the appointed hours of the prince's exit in the high waiter's room. And everyone in this waiter's room experienced the same feeling of respect and even fear, while the enormously high door of the study was opened and the low figure of an old man, with small dry hands and gray drooping eyebrows, sometimes, as he frowning, obscured the brilliance of intelligent and like young shining eyes.
On the day of the arrival of the young, in the morning, as usual, Princess Mary at the appointed hour entered the waiter's room for a morning greeting and crossed herself with fear and recited a prayer inwardly. Every day she came in and every day she prayed that this daily meeting would go well.
The powdered old servant who was sitting in the waiter's room stood up with a quiet movement and announced in a whisper: "You're welcome."
From behind the door came the steady sounds of the machine. The princess timidly pulled at the lightly and smoothly opening door and stopped at the entrance. The prince worked at the machine and, looking around, continued his work.

PRUSSIAN LANGUAGE, one of the Baltic languages, currently dead; is included in the Western Baltic subgroup, being its only representative who has come down to us in the form of written monuments. Sometimes (primarily in the German and English traditions) Prussian is referred to as Old Prussian to distinguish it from the Prussian dialects of German. The Prussian language was spoken in the southeastern part of the Baltic States - in the so-called East Prussia. According to available evidence, the border of the distribution of the Prussian language at the time of its written fixation ran in the west along the Vistula River, in the east (according to R. Trautman) in the area of ​​the German cities of Labiau (now Polessk) and Velau (now Znamensk); the southern part of this boundary is not very clear, the boundary in the north was the Baltic Sea. In the 1st millennium AD the area of ​​distribution of the Prussian language, apparently, was more extensive. During the 17th century the Prussian language finally dies out. There is evidence that the last speaker of the Prussian language died in 1677.

The Prussian language is represented by the following monuments: Elbing German-Prussian Dictionary(contains 802 words; like most medieval dictionaries, compiled according to the "conceptual" principle, without regard to alphabetical order; is part of Codex Neumannianus; dated to about 1400; most likely, this is a copy of a text composed at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries. in Elbing - modern. Polish Elblag); Prussian-German dictionary of the monk Simon Grunau (about 100 Prussian words; the dictionary is part of Prussian Chronicle of Grunau written between 1517 and 1526; 8 copies of this manuscript are known). In addition, there are three catechisms in Prussian (translated from German), of which two, printed in 1545 in Königsberg, are translations of Luther's Small Catechism(the second translation is the corrected first); the third catechism, the so-called Enchiridion(1561), is the most extensive text in Prussian.

In addition to written monuments, the material for the study of the Prussian language is provided by toponymy, anthroponymy (i.e. place names and names of people), as well as alleged borrowings from the Prussian language in some dialects of German, Polish and Lithuanian.

By the time of the creation of the mentioned monuments, the Prussian language was already being replaced by German: the territory of its distribution and the scope of its use were decreasing. German, and earlier Polish, strongly influenced Prussian. In particular, the grammatical system was gradually simplified (for example, the number of cases was reduced), borrowed vocabulary partially replaced the native one. However, the meager evidence available about the Prussian language is insufficient for correct conclusions about the state of this language in the 16th century. Thus, for example, it is impossible to distinguish between the real degradation of the Prussian language in the 16th century. and the degradation of the language of the monuments at our disposal, due to their translational nature. The authors-compilers of these texts might not have sufficient knowledge of Prussian or, conversely, German. It is impossible to decide what in these texts conveys the phonetic structure of the Prussian language, and what is an orthographic convention: it is clear that the adaptation of German orthography to Prussian phonetics was not easy and therefore inconsistent; it is also possible that some of the texts were written by German-speaking people who perceived Prussian phonetics through the prism of the German sound system. For example, the sounds [s] and [z] are not distinguished in the texts - it is very likely that the authors of the texts simply did not know how to distinguish these two sounds using German spelling (in German they are not distinguished in writing).

The phonological system of the Prussian language had the following features. Vowels differed in length/shortness; there were two intonations (due to the graphic features of the texts, these intonations were recorded only for diphthongs). The accent was free. There was palatalization (softening) of consonants. In the mentioned monuments we find two numbers (singular and plural), two genders (male and female) and four cases (name, wine, gender and date). AT Elbing Dictionary the neuter gender is also mentioned. There is inconsistency in the use of cases, the gradual withering away of the case system. Verbs change in numbers, persons, tenses and moods (the third person is the same for both numbers, which is a common Baltic feature). There are three grammatical tenses: present, past and future; three moods: indicative, imperative and "desirable" (optative). In addition, there are such verb forms as the infinitive, the participle (four types: active and passive - respectively, present and past tense) and, possibly, supin. In Prussian texts, descriptive constructions are also attested, conveying the German passive, perfect and future tense.

There are two dialects: Pomesan (Western - the language Elbing Dictionary) and Samlandic, or Sambian (eastern, in which catechisms are written). The Pomesanian dialect is distinguished by the transition [a]> [o] after the labial and back-lingual, the transition >, the transition *iau to , *tl>cl, the appearance of the prosthetic w before the initial and [u]. The language of catechisms is characterized by the transition > and diphthongization and. In morphology, a distinctive feature of the Pomesanian dialect is the preservation of the middle gender and the ending -is in it. pad. husband. R. nouns a-declension (as opposed to -as in the dialect of catechisms).

Some scientists (for example, V.N. Toporov) believe that Prussian is closer than other Baltic languages ​​to Slavic; famous researcher Chr. Stang argued otherwise. A number of features unite the Prussian language with other Indo-European languages ​​and separate it from the rest of the Baltic and Slavic languages. This is the ending -as (and not reflexes *-a:) in gender. pad. husband. R. ( a-declension), formant -sm- (rather than -m-) in dat. pad. units h. husband and avg. R. for pronouns, the formant -man- (rather than -m-) for passive participles is present. time.

In a number of points, the Prussian language does not share the Lithuanian-Latvian innovations (which are also absent in Proto-Slavic). This is the preservation of the old diphthongs *ai, *ei (without their transition in some cases to *ie, as happened in Lithuanian and Latvian) and the absence (in the dialect of catechisms) of the transition *tl, *dl> *kl, *gl. Prussian has a number of similarities with the Slavic languages ​​that are not shared by Lithuanian and Latvian: the preservation of the neuter gender (in Old Lithuanian, judging by the old borrowings in the Baltic-Finnish languages, there was also a neuter gender), conjugation features of specific verbs and the presence of some common words.

Prussian language

one of the Baltic languages ​​(Western Baltic group). Sometimes called Old Prussian to distinguish it from the Prussian dialects of the German language. On P. I. spoken in the southeastern Baltic, east of the Vistula, since the beginning of the 2nd millennium, the territory of its distribution has been declining. By the beginning of the 18th century P. i. died out, the descendants of the Prussians switched to German.

Monuments: Elbing German-Prussian Dictionary (a little over 800 words), about 1400; Prussian-German dictionary by Simon Grunau (about 100 words), early 16th century; 3 catechisms on P. I. (translated from German): 1545 (1st and 2nd catechisms), 1561 (3rd, the so-called Enchiridion, the most extensive text in P. Ya.); individual phrases and words preserved in the descriptions of the Prussians; Prussian verse inscription (2 lines), mid-14th century Information about P. I. they also give toponymy and anthroponymy, partly Prussian borrowings in the Prussian dialects of the German language, in Polish and Western Lithuanian dialects. All monuments reflect the results of a strong German and earlier Polish influence, and P. i. appears in a significantly different form.

There are 2 dialects: Pomesan (more western, it can be judged from the Elbing dictionary) and Samland, or Sambian (more eastern, in which all catechisms are written).

Phonetics is characterized by the opposition of vowels in longitude - brevity, a relatively simple system of consonants, free stress, a phonologically significant opposition of intonations, a tendency to palatalization and labialization of consonants, to mixing hissing with whistling, to diphthongization under certain conditions of long vowels. In morphology, the name distinguishes between the categories of number, gender (there is also a neuter gender in the Pomesanian dialect), case (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative; there is a tendency to develop a “general” case); the verb is characterized by the categories of number (essentially non-distinguishing of numbers in the 3rd person), person, tense (present, past, future), mood (indicative, imperative, maybe optative and conditionalis), some specific characteristics are noted. On the syntactic features of P. Ya. it is more difficult to judge because of the translated nature of the monuments. In general, P. I. characterized by a combination of archaisms and neoplasms. The vocabulary contains a large number of Polish and German borrowings. In a number of respects P. I. reveals a special affinity for the Slavic languages.

Trautmann R., Die altpreußischen Sprachdenkmäler, Gött., 1910; his own, Die altpreußischen Personennamen, Gött., 1925; Gerullis G., Die altpreußischen Ortsnamen, B. - Lpz., 1922; Endzelins J., Senprūšu valoda, Riga, 1943; Prūsų kalbos paminklai, Parengė V. Mažiulis, t. 1-2, Vilnius, 1966-81; Schmalstieg W. R., An Old Prussian grammar, L., 1974; his, Studies in Old Prussian, L., 1976. Nesselmann G. H. F., Thesaurus linguae prussicae, Berolini, 1873; Toporov V.N., Prussian language. Dictionary, vol. 1-5, M., 1975-89 (ed. continues); Mažiulis V., Prūsų kalbos etimologijos žodynas, t. 1, Vilnius, 1988 (ed. ongoing).

Prussian language

(prúsiszka kalba, preussnische Sprache) or the language of the ancient inhabitants of the sea coast of East Prussia died out in the 17th century. Until the 1860s was known from three catechisms of 1545 and 1561. They were printed in Königsberg by the printer Hans Weinreich, and the longer "Enchiridion" by John Daubmann under the supervision of Abel Wiel, a pastor in Pobaten. Despite the mass of Germanisms and translation inaccuracies, A. Wil noted for the Prussian language a long pronunciation (lange Pronunciation) of five vowels a, e, i, o, u, denoting it with a special superscript line. A similar accuracy of observation was noticed at the end of the 16th century by the Lithuanian writer N. Dauksha. The writers and translators who followed them left the longitude and place of stress in Lithuanian words without designation. On the basis of the specially designated longitude of Prussian vowels, academician Fortunatov and the German linguist E. Bernecker came to the same conclusion that the designation of longitude with a dash is not only quite meaningful, but also expresses longitude under stress. misconception about immobility stresses in Prussian, like Latvian, have been refuted. The Prussian lengthening corresponds to the ascending or strong intonation of the Lithuanian language, while the intermittent movement of the voice or the descending stress of the diphthong remains unmarked, or the dash is placed on the second part of the two-vowel (cf. "Russian Philological Bulletin", 33, 252 ff., 1895; D-r Erich Bernekker, "Die Preuss Sprache", 1896, 115-116). At the beginning of the 19th century, the Prussian language was known from the studies of Severin Vater in Halle. A critical analysis of the latter was written by the Polish lexicologist W. Linde, and this review was translated into Russian by Anastasevich, who placed it in the "Proceedings of the V. of the Free Society of Lovers of Russian Literature", for 1822, or in the XVIII volume of "Competitor of Enlightenment", on page 280-334. This article was the only one in Russian literature until 1895, when Fortunatov's investigations about stress in the Prussian language appeared. The first scientific study of P. language was given 50 years ago by G. X. F. Nesselman in his Preussische Sprache. In 1868, the same Nesselman published the Elbingen Dictionary, discovered by Neumann. This glossary consists of 802 words in Middle German and P. languages ​​and was compiled at the beginning of the 15th century. It is a whole century older than all hitherto known printed monuments of the Baltic-Lithuanian dialects (Phototypically published in 1897 by Betsenberger and Simon). Vocabulary is compiled with a practical purpose for reference in court speaking. The words are grouped not alphabetically, but according to separate concepts, starting with Got - deywis, i.e. god, and ending with the concepts of the earth - tautan, village - kaymis, fence (hedge) - sardis. From this vocabulary it is clear that the Prussians, in addition to deywis - god, revered "kauks" - the devil, perkunis - thunder, hell - piculs. The owner, now among the Lithuanians - gaspadoris, was called people with, instead of zhmogus they said pulp, rye - zirne (grain), for wheat it was not the Gothic word kviecziai (from hveitis), as among Lithuanians, but an expression corresponding to German white grain and bread (weissbrod), i.e. gaydis; millet is borrowed like poppy from the Slavs and was called prasan and moke. For bread, unlike Lithuanian diop and Latvian mayse(actually barley bread) and Russian moasis, the word geitis was in use - rye (rye). In addition to the difference in the agricultural culture of P. (they have special names for oats, wheat, peas), the dictionary retained the old nomenclature of geographical names. The word kaymis, characteristically borrowed from the Gothic "haims" of P., is a village still known in the northern part of the Suwalki province and in the Rossiensky district, and in the Little Russian act language koimins - for designations of the agricultural class. Instead of Lithuanian kalnas(mountain) Prussians spoke garbas, garbis(Slavic hump, Prussian names Garbe, Garben); instead of upe, upes, the river was called ape, apus; instead of juodac - kirsna- black, hence the name of the volost of the Suwalki province near the Black River Kirsnos kaima; the word tauris was used by the Prussians in the sense of a tour, Wesant; the rooster was called gertis, not the songbird = gaidýs, as among the Lithuanians. In addition to milk "dadan", not pienas like the Lithuanians and Latvians, there was also koumiss aswinan (Kobelmilch). The seasons are especially named: summer dagis, that is, the time of heat, and asanis - autumn from the Gothic assans - time to harvest. Armament was called by the Gothic sarwa, sorwis, which has survived to this day as szarvas in the sense of a dowry among the dzuks of the Suwalki province. Armor and armor were called brunjos, like Bulgarian armor and Gothic brunjo. The current chobots, the Lithuanian czebotai were replaced by Kurpas, special sandals made of leather and wood. The so-called headmen and princelings of the Prussians "reguli Prussorum" were called rikis from the Middle German riks, and not kunigas, as among the Lithuanians and Latvians. In addition, there were estates of free people-warriors of the so-called Vitings (cf. Slavic knight). In general, P. vocabulary is explained, with the exception of the cases given, best from Lithuanian, less from Latvian; in addition to Gothic, Old and Middle German, there are borrowings from Kashubian (for example, lisytyos-Nothstall, a portable fence for herding sheep: kasz. leséca płot przenosny) and Polish. Phonologically, the language differs from other Baltic-Lithuanian dialects in the following ways: 1) there is no sound ie (ё), which is replaced by the diphthong ei, ai. For example, Deivis instead of Dievas is a god, Finnish tawas is a sky-god; deina - day, instead of diena; seilis - diligence, instead of siel-otis - try, Slavic strength; 2) ai stands instead of ie, ei, e: ainà instead of viená - ina; waispattí, vieszpats - householder, ancestor; waidiut - to show, waideler - waidelot, church-glory. in food; 3) instead of lat. ů, o - Prussian. ã: dãtwei - give, důti; stoti - Prussian. postat; 4) after guttural and labial Lithuanian õ, ů is like u: muti - mother, instead of mote; zmunents - person, instead of źmon-es - people; mukint - to teach, instead of mokinti; 5) Lithuanian. sz from k" and ż from g", gh" is as in Slavic in the form s, z: siran, seir (cf. Seiree local) - lit. szirdis; prēisieks - lit. prieszininkas; amzis, people - lit. amżias , century, eternity, Celtic - amser, mazais, lesser - Lith. mažas Among the Lithuanians (ancient Barts) of Slonim County, the goose is still not żansis, but zãsis; h. inclined by the name of beings that have retained ancient nasals: Deiwan - god instead of Lit. Dievą; nacktin - Lit. nakti; wirdans instead of wardus; ackins - eyes, instead of akis; stessei, stessias and pl stēison, Danish plural with suffix - mans instead of mus, 8) the Prussian verb was not complete enough, but among the surviving forms are notable: a) 1st lit. plurals in -mai instead of Lit më, m Latvian mie: gíwammai - we live, pidimmai - we wear, waidimai - we know b) imperative forms without prefix ki, k: immais - take, immaili - take; ) I nfinitivus on - twai: poutwei - to drink, billítwei - to speak.

In addition to the above, F. Bopp, F. A. Pott, Jog. Schmidt in Berlin, A. Bezzenberger in Koenigsberg, F. Smith in Copenhagen, Uhlenbeck in Amsterdam (he also published catechisms again in 1889), A. Leskin, Pearson (cf. Prussian bibliography compiled by A. Kunik, " Catechism" Dauksha, p. XLVI). A brief overview of the fate of P. language and its main sources before 1880 was given in Polish by Yu. Ossovsky in "Rocznik" ax Tow. Naukow and Toruniu (II, pp. 99-216). According to Pearson's account, there are only 1327 roots in P., of which most (715) are of the same origin with Lithuanian and Latvian, 178 Slavic, 77 Germanic and about 200 Celtic, which is the least likely. Little too much attention has so far been paid to the Prussianisms of the ancient Lithuanian language of the 16th century. in the writings of Dauksha, Bretkun and Shirvid and on regional words (such as grambolis - beetle) of little-studied dzeka dialects of the Vilna and Suwalki provinces. According to its monuments, the P. language is older than all other Baltic dialects. Vocabulary of Goltswescher introduces us to the mental outlook of the Prussians of the late XIV and early XV centuries. The absence of the name of the flower, which is still designated from the Slavic tvetok, is striking, the flower is called kvietkas. There are words in Prussian that are closer to Slavic than to Lithuanian, for example, zeidis - wall to build, Serb. zid; salowis - a nightingale among the Lithuanians with him. Nachtigall laksztingala. Words stand out stabis- a stone, now known only in the names of the localities Staburags, Stabiski; from there stubnis- stove, stove Gold is denoted by the word ausis instead of the Lithuanian auksas, closer to the Old Latin ausum, aurum - gold, apparently reached the Baltic coast thanks to the amber trade. According to the catechism of 1545, P.'s language extended to Natangia, Samlandia, Velava, and Sudavia. In the XIV century. Prussian was spoken in Bartow, Warmia (Ermeland) and parts of Galindia. Nadrovia has already entered the Lithuanian language region (see Prussian Lithuania). But beyond the political borders of present-day Prussia, within the limits of the Russian provinces of Grodno and Suwalki, there lived Prussians, either who had gone "involuntarily before the Germans," or who fought together with the Yotvingians against the Poles and Galicians.

Wed Martin Schultze, "Gram. der altpreuss. Sprache" (1897); A. Bezzenberger, "Anzeige von E. Bernekker Pr. Spr. ("Beitr. z. K. d. indogerm. Spr.").

E. Voltaire.

Encyclopedic Dictionary F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron. - St. Petersburg: Brockhaus-Efron. 1890-1907 .

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