Old Prussian language
Old Prussian was a Western Baltic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic 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. History. Original territory. In addition to  Prussia proper, the original territory of the Old Prussians might have included eastern parts of Pomerelia (some parts of the region east of the Vistula River). The language might have also been spoken much further east and south in what became Polesia and part of Podlasie, before conquests by Rus and Poles starting in the 10th century and the German colonisation of the area starting in the 12th century. Relation to other languages. Old Prussian was closely related to the other extinct Western Baltic languages, namely Curonian, Galindian and Sudovian. It is related to the Eastern Baltic languages such as  Lithuanian and Latvian, and more distantly related to Slavic. Compare the words for "land": Old Prussian "", and , (). Old Prussian had cognates with Slavic languages (e.g., Old Prussian ' "hound", like Lithuanian ' and Latvian ', cognate with Slavic (compare , ; ; )), as well as a few borrowings from Germanic, including from Gothic (e.g., Old Prussian ' "awl" as with Lithuanian ', Latvian ') and from Scandinavian languages. Decline. With the conquest of the Old Prussian territory by the Teutonic Knights in the 13th century, and the subsequent influx of Polish, Lithuanian and especially German speakers, Old Prussian experienced a 400-year-long decline as an "oppressed language of  an oppressed population". Groups of people from Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Scotland, England, and Austria (see Salzburg Protestants) found refuge in Prussia during the Protestant Reformation and thereafter. Old Prussian ceased to be spoken probably around the beginning of the 18th century, because many of its remaining speakers died in the famines and the bubonic plague outbreak which harrowed the East Prussian countryside and towns from 1709 until 1711. The Germanic regional dialect of Low German spoken in Prussia (or East Prussia), called Low Prussian (cf. High Prussian, also a Germanic language), preserved a number of Baltic Prussian words, such as  ', from the Old Prussian ', for "shoe" in contrast to common Low German ' (standard German '). Until the 1938 renaming of East Prussian placenames, Old Prussian river- and place-names, such as ' and ', could still be found. Revitalization. A few linguists and philologists are involved in reviving a reconstructed form of the language from Luther's catechisms, the Elbing Vocabulary, place names, and Prussian loanwords in the Low Prussian dialect of German. Several dozen people use the language in Lithuania, Kaliningrad, and Poland, including a few children who are native speakers. The Prusaspirā Society has published their translation of Antoine de Saint -Exupéry's "The Little Prince". The book was translated by Piotr Szatkowski (Pīteris Šātkis) and released in 2015. The other efforts of Baltic Prussian societies include the development of online dictionaries, learning apps and games. There also have been several attempts to produce music with lyrics written in the revived Baltic Prussian language, most notably in the Kaliningrad Oblast by the bands Romowe Rikoito, Kellan and Āustras Laīwan, as well as in Lithuania by Kūlgrinda in their 2005 album "Prūsų Giesmės" (Prussian Hymns), and Latvia by Rasa Ensemble in 1988 and Valdis Muktupāvels in his 2005 oratorio "Pārcēlātājs Pontifex" featuring  several parts sung in Prussian. Important in this revival was Vytautas Mažiulis, who died on 11 April 2009, and his pupil , leader of the experiment and author of the website "Prussian Reconstructions". Two late contributors were (Prāncis Arellis) in Lithuania, and Dailonis Rusiņš (Dailūns Russinis) in Latvia. After them, Twankstas Glabbis from Kaliningrad oblast and Nērtiks Pamedīns from Warmia-Mazuria actively joined. Grammar. With other remains being merely word lists, the grammar of Old Prussian is reconstructed chiefly on the basis of the three Catechisms. There is no consensus on the number of cases that Old Prussian had, and at  least four can be determined with certainty: nominative, genitive, accusative and dative, with different suffixes. There are traces of a vocative case, such as in the phrase ' "O God the Lord", reflecting the inherited PIE vocative ending *'. There was a definite article (' m., ' f. = "štas", "šta", with "s" due to German orthography); three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), and two numbers (singular and plural). Declensional classes were '-stems, '-stems (feminine), '-stems (feminine), '-stems, '-stems, '/'-stems, '/""-stems and consonant-stems. The final -n is now lost in Eastern Baltic languages. Present, future and past tense are attested, as well as  optative forms (used with imperative or permissive forms of verbs), infinitive, and four participles (active/passive present/past). Phonology. The following description is based on the phonological analysis by Schmalstieg (1974): Sample texts. Versions of the Lord's Prayer. Lord's Prayer after Simon Grunau (Curonian-Latvian) Lord's Prayer after Prätorius (Curonian-Latvian) Lord's Prayer in Old Prussian (from the so-called "1st Catechism") Lord's Prayer in Lithuanian dialect of Insterburg (Prediger Hennig) Lord's Prayer in Lithuanian dialect of Nadruvia, corrupted (Simon Praetorius) This jocular inscription was most probably made by a Prussian student studying in  Prague (Charles University); found by Stephen McCluskey (1974) in manuscript MS F.V.2 (book of physics " by Nicholas Oresme), fol. 63r, stored in the Basel University library.