DICTIONARY OF REVIVED PRUSSIAN:

PREFACE
This work is only a little step toward realisation of the task set for all years of remaining
life: as authentical as possible to reconstruct vocabulary of the extinct Baltic
Prussian language. This means to produce a kind of persuasive falsification on the
basis of modern as well as comparative linguistics. This is the reason why this Dictionary
consists of: 1) inherited lexis found in the monuments of Old Prussian; 2)
authentic Baltic Prussian lexis reconstructed mostly by Vytautas Maþiulis as well as
by other Prussologists; 3) areale cultural lexis which had to penetrate into Prussian in
concreteepochs first and foremost from Lower German as well as from German dialects
of former West- and East Prussia; 4) generally spread modern international lexis.
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LINGUISTIC PRINCIPLES OF THE RECOVERY OF OLD PRUSSIAN
1. The Prussians, “Ideal Prussians”, Old Prussian and New
Prussian
To recover a language as a tool of communication means to revive it for needs of a
concrete group of people.
When speaking about Prussian one always faces 2 common “truths”:
1) the Old Prussians were annihilated by the Germans who misappropriated
their name;
2) Old Prussian died out in the 16 th c.
The Old Prussians never created a centralized state, but their tribes became
united and comprehended as one nation only under the rule of the Teutonic Order.
Moreover: the first Prussian state was an independent Baltic state – not any national
German state – despite German of the authorities of the Order. After bloody almost
century-long wars against the Baltic Prussians, even the authorities of the state were
mixed, being representatives of different European nations who had participated in
crusades against Baltic Prussia in the 13 th c.
The Old Prussian nobility became linguistically Germanized by the 14 th c.
Linguistic Germanizing of free Prussian peasants began in the middle of the 15 th c.,
when after the catastrophe of Tannenberg (1410) the Free Prussians fled to Germanized
towns in order to avoid being sold as serfs, together with their land, for the debts of
the state. The remaining Prussians serfs preserved their language until their physical
extinction during the plague and famine of 1709–1711.