Old Prussian language
| Prussian | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Region | Prussia (region) |
| Extinct | Early 18th century |
| Revival | Attempted revival, with 50 L2 speakers (no date) |
|
Indo-European
|
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | prus1238 |
| Linguasphere | 54-AAC-a |
 |
|
Old Prussian is an extinct Baltic language, once spoken by the Old Prussians, the indigenous peoples of Prussia (not to be confused with the later and much larger German state of the same name), now northeastern Poland and the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia.
The language is called Old Prussian to avoid confusion with the German dialects Low Prussian and High Prussian, and the adjective Prussian, which is also often used to relate to the later German state.
Old Prussian began to be written down in the Latin alphabet in about the 13th century. A small amount of literature in the language survives.
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 with the conquests by Rus and Poles starting in the 10th century and by the German colonisation of the area that began in the 12th century..
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 Old Prussian semmē, Latvian zeme and Lithuanian žemė.
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