OLD PRUSSIAN LANGUAGE. An ex tinct member of the Baltic group of Indo4;er manic langnages Which ova; SpOkVu until the seventeenth century in Prussia. The remnants of the lan?duage ate very scanty, and are too meagre to permit a reennstruetion of the gram mar. The Old Prussian fragments consist of translations of two catechisms, printed in 1545, and of the Short Catechism of Luther t I 561 d. There are also two 1)1(1 Pru:sian-Oerman vocalm that of Eliding, compdiled in the first half of the fifteenth century. containing s02 words. some of which, however, are loan-words, and that of f ;runau, who composed a list of 100 words between 5 1 7 and 15211. This vide:doll:1 iy of Gni nau is so inaccurate as to be of little value. The Elbing list, on the contrary, if used with caution, is the most valuable source of our knowledge of the langun:re next to Luther's catechism. The chief phonological charaeteristics of Old Prus sian are ae follows: remains in Old Prussian under the circumflex accent, hut becomes 7 under the acute, as srminr', 'earth,' acdvnte(1 on the ultimate like the equivalent Rus sian zenityri but with the circumflex like Lith uanian 'daughter) : turrit, 'to do,' Lith uanian Inn'ti. lndo-t:ermanie o becomes a in Old Prussian as in the other Baltic dialects (Lettie and Lithuanian), as Latin ocu/us, Old Church Slavic oho, 'eye,' but Old Prussian achis, Lithu anian (7/0s, Lettic an, while 0, like is repre sented by 0 or, after gutturals, by 0 in Old Prus sian, o lit) in Lithuanian, and 0 ( U) in Lettic, as Gothic fr0ps, 'wise,' Old Prussian pralin, `counsel,' Lithuanian priitas, `understanding,' Lettie 'will,' but 111d Latin `man; Old Prussian man:. Indo-Germanic r, 1, rat, become in old Prussian as. in the BIlltie dialects in, il, int, in, as Sanskrit rrtha, `in vain,' 01(1 Prussian pran-ilts. 'to betray,' Lithuanian Lettie 'to deceive.' In script at least there is no distinction between s and z, as Skt. da:;:a, Latin !Irwin, Old Prussian dessim tons, Lithuanian t is, 'ten.' Old Church Slavic des, but Sanskrit jii0, Greek yryrisctirir, Old Prussian posinnat. Lithuanian zinrili, Lettie gam1, Old C'hurch Slavic via N. 'to know.' In accent Old Prussian seems to have resembled Lettic rather than Lithuanian. The Old Prussian long vowel plus liquid. and nasal plus consonant. therefore corre
spond, like the Lettie acute accent, to the Lithu anian cirefuntlex, while like combinations with unlengthened vowel eorrespond. like the Lettic lengthened vowel. to the Lithuanian acute. The noun had five cases, nominative, accusative, geni tive, dative, and vocative, as well as a few traces of an instrumental. The original lndo Germanic terminations are, in general. served. as dative drirdui. 'to the word.' Li Hula nia n ruFdlli, ef. Avesta rah r/,-0 i, Greek Jesq, `to the accusative plural inirdans, 'words,' cf. Cretan Greek Ndircous, I;ot ie f-u/Pans, genitive plural. as grikan, 'of sins; Lithuanian gair, Lettic grihn, cf. Vedic Sanskrit !Than?, 'of wolves,' Greek irru.ad, Latin (1( um, 'of gods.' (In the other hand, the genitive siugn lar of s-sh•nis is borrowed front those in -a-, as /friaws, 'of (cf. yottots, 'of a woman,' !:reek A:60/c, 'of a but Lithuanian rill" 'of a wolf,' Lettie rilka, Old Church Slavic rink°, and the dative plural receives an s from the accusa tive ura I, di s ansehoutcaikamans, •to debtors.' but Lithuanian rankoni us, 'to hands,' Let t is rob( Ohl Cloud] Slavic regounii. The verb has a present and past indicative, an im perative (optative), an optative of secondary formation, present and past active and passive participles, and an infinitive. The third person plural. as in the other Baltic dialect:, coincides in form with the singular. The ending is a, as scarinka, 'he gathers,' Lithuanian refika. and is a relic of the In(104]ermani^ present injunctive. as Sanskrit efatugut. 'he is to rouse.' The first person singular is also old, as inunu, '1 take.' f ;reek Ai loose.' The infinitive appears in three forms. undifferentiated in meaning, as (Mt du ton, dot, 'to give.' The form (idittcci is usually compared with such Vedic Sanskrit infinitives as (Mature', 'to place,' while duton, like Lithuanian deli. and Old Church Slavic rich], is to be compared with Sanskrit (11i0 um, Latin con-ditum, 'to place.' The explanation of such infinitives as Brit is not yet clear. Consult: Nes selmann, Die Sprache der alten Preussen (Ber lin, 1845) ; id., Thesaurus Lingua' Prnssica 1 :;i73 ) ; Berneker, Die pneussische Sprache (Strasburg, ltilni).