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The monuments
of Old Prussian are:
1 - Prussian
geographical names within the territory of Baltic Prussia (the first
basic study of these names was by Georg Gerullis, Die altpreußischen
Ortsnamen. Berlin und Leipzig, 1922) [ON];
2 – Prussian personal names (up to now the main research is of
Reinhold Trautmann, Die altpreußischen Personennamen. Göttingen, 1923,
in which the work of Ernst Lewy, 1904, is included) [APN];
3 - separate words found in various historical documents [DK];
4 - vernacularisms in former German dialects of East and West Prussia,
as well words of the Old Curonian origin in Latvian and West-Baltic
vernacularisms in Lithuanian and Belorussian [DIA];
5 - so called Basel Epigram
Kayle rekyse. thoneaw
labonache thewelyse. Eg. koyte poyte. nykoyte. pe^nega doyte
(this may be: Kaīls rikīse! Tu ni jāu laban asei tēwelise, ik kwaitēi
pōiti, ni kwaitēi peningā dōiti ”Hello Sir! Thou already art not
a good uncle if thou wilt trink but doest not will give money”). This is
an inscription of the 14th c., found by St. McCluskey in one
of folios of the Basel university in 1974 [BPT];
6 – fragmentary texts
a) recorded in several versions by Hieronymus Maletius in Sudovian Nook
in the middle of the 16th c. –
Beigeite beygeyte peckolle “Run, devils, run!”,
Kails naussen gnigethe
“Hello our friend!”,
Kails poskails ains par
antres (a drinking
toast here reconstructed as Kaīls pas kaīls, aīns per āntran
“A healthy one after a healthy one (one after another)!”,
Kellewesze perioth/
Kellewesze perioth
“A carter drives here, a carter drives here!”,
O hoho Moi mile
swente Pannike “Oh my dear holy fire!” [MBS];
b) an expresion from the list (F) of the Vocabulary of friar Simon
Grunau, a historian of the German Order -
sta nossen rickie,
nossen rickie “This
is our lord, our lord” [GrF];
7 – a
manuscript fragment of the first words of Pater Noster from the
beginning of the 15th c.
Towe Nüsze kås esse
andangonsün swyntins [TN];
8 - 100 words
in strongly varying versions (A, C, F, G, H,
cf. Bibliography, V. Mažiulis PKP II, 48, ftn. 7) of the Vocabulary by Simon Grunau of ca.
1517-1526 [Gr];
9 - so called
Elbing Vocabulary consisting of 802 thematically sorted words and their
German equivalents. This manuscript, copied by Peter Holcwesscher from
Marienburg on the boundary of the 14th / 15th c.,
was found in 1825 by Fr. Neumann among other manuscripts acquired by him
from the heritage of Elbing merchant A. Grübnau (“Codex
Neumannianus”) [E];
10 - 11 - 12 -
three Catechisms [I, II, III] printed in Königsberg
in 1540, 1540 and 1561 respectively, of which two first consist only 6
pages of the Prussian text, the II being a correction of the I in an
another sub-dialect, but the III one consists of 132 pages of the
Prussian text and is a translation by Abel Will of Martin Luther’s
Enchiridion.
An adage of
1583 - Dewes does
dantes, Dewes does geitka
[OT] may be not Prussian (the form does in the second instance
corresponds to Lith. fut. duos ‘will give’).
As for trencke/ trencke “Strike! Strike!” [MBS], it is
Lithuanian, not Prussian with all probability.
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