OLD PRUSSIAN LANGUAGE

West Baltic language extinct since the 17th century; it was spoken in the former German area of East Prussia (now in Poland and Russia). The poorly attested Yotvingian dialect was closely related to Old Prussian. Old Prussian preserved many archaic Baltic features that do not occur in the related East Baltic languages (Latvian, Lithuanian), among them the preservation of the final -n of the Proto-Baltic language (the ancestor of Old Prussian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and the other Baltic languages), the Proto-Baltic diphthongs ai and ei, and the use of neuter gender in nouns (East Baltic languages have only masculine and feminine gender). Old Prussian also contained many inflectional forms and vocabulary items unknown in East Baltic. Old Prussian had a position intermediate between East Baltic and the Slavic group. Modern knowledge of Old Prussian is based primarily on a German-Prussian vocabulary, known as the Elbing vocabulary and compiled about 1300, and the three Old Prussian catechisms dating from the 16th century.