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59-757: Across the Rhine to the west extended the Silva Carbonaria , the forest of the Ardennes and the forest of the Vosges . All these old-growth forests of antiquity represented the original post-glacial temperate broadleaf forest ecosystem of Europe. Relict tracts of this once-continuous forest exist with many local names: the Black Forest , the Ardennes , the Bavarian Forest , the Vosges ,

118-522: A Proto-Celtic derivation, from ɸerkuniā , later erkunia . Julius Pokorny lists Hercynian as being derived from * perkʷu- "oak" (compare quercus ). He further identifies the name as Celtic . Proto-Celtic regularly loses initial *p preceding a vowel, hence the earliest attestations in Greek as Ἀρκόνια ( Aristotle , the e~a interchange common in Celtic names), later Ὀρκύνιος ( Ptolemy , with

177-680: A "strategic axis" linked the Rhine crossing at Cologne with Maastricht , where it crossed the Maas at the head of navigation. Skirting the northern edges of the Silva Carbonaria, it passed through Tongeren , Kortrijk and Cambrai to reach the sea at Boulogne . The highway was the main east–west route in a landscape where the river valleys, tributaries of the Meuse and the Scheldt , tended southwest to northeast. It remained viable through

236-413: A -stems, i -stems, u -stems), of which only the first agreed with the noun in gender. There was a comparative and a superlative form. When it comes to verbal morphology present, future and past tense are attested, as well as optative forms (used with imperative or permissive forms of verbs), infinitive, and four participles (active/passive present/past). The orthography varies depending on

295-593: A dual identifiable in the existent corpus. There is no consensus on the number of cases that Old Prussian had, and at least four can be determined with certainty: nominative, genitive, accusative and dative, with different suffixes . Most scholars agree, that there are traces of a vocative case , such as in the phrase O Deiwe Rikijs 'O God the Lord', reflecting the inherited PIE vocative ending * -e , differing from nominative forms in o-stem nouns only. Some scholars find instrumental forms, while

354-456: A few borrowings from Germanic , including from Gothic (e.g., Old Prussian ylo 'awl' as with Lithuanian ýla , Latvian īlens ) and from Scandinavian languages . The Low German language spoken in Prussia (or West Prussia and East Prussia ), called Low Prussian (cf. High Prussian , High German ), preserved a number of Baltic Prussian words, such as Kurp , from

413-816: A good little comrade if you want to drink (but) do not want to give a penny! This jocular inscription was most probably made by a Prussian student studying in Prague ( Charles University ); found by Stephen McCluskey (1974) in manuscript MS F.V.2 (book of physics Questiones super Meteororum by Nicholas Oresme ), fol. 63r, stored in the Basel University library. The longest texts preserved in Old Prussian are three Catechisms printed in Königsberg in 1545, 1545, and 1561 respectively. The first two consist of only six pages of text in Old Prussian –

472-597: A historian of the Teutonic Knights , encompasses 100 words (in strongly varying versions). He also recorded an expression: sta nossen rickie, nossen rickie ('This (is) our lord, our lord'). The vocabulary is part of the Preussische Chronik written c.  1517–1526 . The second one is the so-called Elbing Vocabulary, which consists of 802 thematically sorted words and their German equivalents. Peter Holcwesscher from Marienburg copied

531-527: A noble hunt. At the start of the nineteenth century the area of this remnant of the primeval forest still covered about 100 square kilometres, but due to timber cutting its area has diminished to its current protected area of 44.21 km². Old Prussian Old Prussian is an extinct West Baltic language belonging to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European languages , which was once spoken by

590-757: A phonological merger of dentialveolar and postalveolar sibilants in many Polish dialects – states that it originated as a feature of Polonized Old Prussians in Masuria (see Masurian dialects ) and spread from there. In addition to Prussia proper, the original territory of the Old Prussians may have included eastern parts of Pomerelia (some parts of the region east of the Vistula River ). The language may also have been spoken much further east and south in what became Polesia and part of Podlasie , before conquests by Rus and Poles starting in

649-540: A revival movement of Old Prussian, and there are families which use Old Prussian as their first language. Old Prussian is an Indo-European language belonging to the Baltic branch. It is considered to be a Western Baltic language. Old Prussian was closely related to the other extinct West Baltic languages , namely Sudovian , West Galindian and possibly Skalvian and Old Curonian . Other linguists consider Western Galindian and Skalvian to be Prussian dialects. It

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708-588: A scientific project and a humanitarian gesture. Some enthusiasts thereafter began to revive the language based on their reconstruction. Most current speakers live in Germany, Poland, Lithuania and Kaliningrad (Russia). Additionally, a few children are native in Revived Prussian. Today, there are websites, online dictionaries, learning apps and games for Revived Prussian, and one children's book – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 's The Little Prince –

767-612: Is a Middle High German word meaning "mountain forest." Also, the Old High German name Fergunna apparently refers to the Ore Mountains and Virgundia (cf. modern Virngrund forest) to a range between Ansbach and Ellwangen . Hercyne was the classical name (modern Libadia) of a small rapid stream in Boeotia that issued from two springs near Lebadea , modern Livadeia, and emptied into Lake Copais . The name

826-549: Is based on the phonological analysis by Schmalstieg: Schmalstieg proposes three native diphthongs: With other remains being merely word lists, the grammar of Old Prussian is reconstructed chiefly on the basis of the three Catechisms. Old Prussian preserved the Proto-Baltic neuter. Therefore, it had three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter). Most scholars agree that there are two numbers, singular and plural, in Old Prussian, while some consider remnants of

885-710: Is believed that before the Boii the Hercuniates tribe inhabited the area, later migrating to Pannonia in Illyria . By the middle of the first century BC, the Hercuniates were a minor tribe that was located along a narrow band of Celtic settlement close to the Danube , on the western side of the river a little way west of modern Budapest . Their name comes from an ancient proto-Indo-European word for an oak . The tribe

944-711: Is cited dozens of times in several classical authors, but most of the references are non-definitive, e.g., the Hercynian Forest is Pomponius Mela 's silvis ac paludibus invia , "trackless forest and swamps" (Mela, De Chorographia , iii.29), as the author is assuming the reader would know where the forest is. The earliest reference is in Aristotle 's ( Meteorologica ). He refers to the Arkýnia (or Orkýnios ) mountains of Europe, but tells us only that, remarkably in his experience, rivers flow north from there. During

1003-427: Is indefinitely more than sixty days' march. The region fascinated him, even the old tales of unicorns (which may have represented reindeer ). Caesar's references to moose and aurochs and of elk without joints which leaned against trees to sleep in the endless forests of Germania, were probably later interpolations in his Commentaries . Caesar's name for the forest is the one most used: Hercynia Silva . Pliny

1062-526: Is mainly a word-for-word translation, and Will phonetically recorded Megott's oral translation. Because of this, the Enchiridion exhibits many irregularities, such as the lack of case agreement in phrases involving an article and a noun , which followed word-for-word German originals as opposed to native Old Prussian syntax. The "Trace of Crete" is a short poem added by a Baltic writer in Chania to

1121-596: Is more often found in Pomesianan than in Sambian. Others argue that the Catechisms are written in a Yatvingized Prussian. The differences noted above could therefore be explained as being features of a different West Baltic language Yatvingian/Sudovian . The Prussian language is described to have the following consonants: There is said to have existed palatalization (i.e. [tʲ] , [dʲ] ) among nearly all of

1180-455: Is referred to by Pliny and Ptolemy as a civitas peregrina , a wandering tribe that had travelled to Pannonia from foreign parts. Little else is known of them save that they were issuing their own coins by the second century BC. By AD 40 the tribe was eventually subdued by Rome. Monks sent out from Niederaltaich Abbey (founded in the eighth century) brought under cultivation for the first time great forested areas of Lower Bavaria as far as

1239-622: Is related to the East Baltic languages such as Lithuanian and Latvian , and more distantly related to Slavic . Compare the words for 'land': Old Prussian semmē [zemē], Latvian : zeme , Lithuanian : žemė , Russian: земля́ , ( zemljá ) and Polish : ziemia . Old Prussian had loanwords from Slavic languages (e.g., Old Prussian curtis [kurtis] 'hound', like Lithuanian kùrtas and Latvian kur̃ts , cognate with Slavic (compare Ukrainian : хорт , khort ; Polish : chart ; Czech : chrt )), as well as

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1298-583: The Early Middle Ages across what is now western Wallonia . The Silva Carbonaria was a vast forest that stretched from the rivers Zenne and the Dijle in the north to the Sambre in the south. Its northern outliers reached the then marshy site of modern Brussels . Further to the southeast, the higher elevation and deep river valleys were covered by the even less penetrable ancient Arduenna Silva ,

1357-538: The Early Middle Ages as the chaussée Brunehaut , the "Road of Brunehaut". As a public work its scale had become unimaginable in the Middle Ages: the chronicler Jean d'Outremeuse solemnly related in 1398 that Brunehaut , wife of Sigebert I , had built this wide paved road in 526, and that it was completed in a single night with the devil's aid. There are signs that the Silva Carbonaria represented

1416-1602: The Eifel , the Jura Mountains , the Swabian Jura , the Franconian Jura , the Polish Jura , the Palatinate Forest , the Teutoburg Forest , the Argonne Forest , the Morvan , the Langres plateau , the Odenwald , the Spessart , the Rhön , the Thuringian Forest , the Harz , the Rauhe Alb , the Steigerwald , the Fichtel Mountains , the Ore Mountains , the Giant Mountains , the Bohemian Forest and

1475-661: The Old Prussians , the Baltic peoples of the Prussian region . The language is called Old Prussian to avoid confusion with the German dialects of Low Prussian and High Prussian and with the adjective Prussian as it relates to the later German state. Old Prussian began to be written down in the Latin alphabet in about the 13th century, and a small amount of literature in the language survives. In modern times, there has been

1534-615: The Protestant Reformation and thereafter. Old Prussian ceased to be spoken probably around the beginning of the 18th century, because many of its remaining speakers died in the famines and the bubonic plague outbreak which harrowed the East Prussian countryside and towns from 1709 until 1711. In the 1980s, linguists Vladimir Toporov and Vytautas Mažiulis started reconstructing the Prussian language as

1593-750: The Salic Law of the Franks, where it marked "the boundary of the territories occupied by the Frankish people". The Liber Historiae Francorum mentions that the war of succession after the death of Pepin of Herstal started when the Neustrian army, under the command of Ragenfrid (mayor of the palace), traversed the Silva Carbonaria Extensive tracts of the untamed woodlands belonged to monasteries. The Benedictine Abbey of Lobbes lay in

1652-759: The Sudetes . In present-day Czech Republic and southern Poland , it joined the forested Carpathians . The Mittelgebirge seem to correspond more or less to a stretch of the Hercynian mountains. Many present-day smaller forests were also included like the Bienwald and the Haguenau Forest . The Hercynian Forest maybe extended northwest to the Veluwe and east to the Białowieża Forest . Hercynian has

1711-609: The Sudovian Book in the middle of the 16th century. Palmaitis regards them as Sudovian proper. In addition to the texts listed beneath, there are several colophons written by Prussian scriptors who worked in Prague and in the court of Lithuanian duke Butautas Kęstutaitis . The so-called Basel Epigram is the oldest written Prussian sentence (1369). It reads: Kayle rekyse thoneaw labonache thewelyse Eg koyte poyte nykoyte pênega doyte Cheers, Sir! You are no longer

1770-576: The o unexplained) and Ἑρκύνιος δρυμός ( Strabo ). The latter form first appears in Latin as Hercynia in Julius Caesar , inheriting the aspiration and the letter y from a Greek source. The Germanic forms appear with an f for *p by Grimm's Law , perhaps indicating an early borrowing from Celtic before it lost the initial consonant: Gothic faírguni = "mountain, mountain range", Old English firgen = "mountain, mountain-woodland". Still

1829-406: The "Hercynian ravine-land") patefecit . The isolated modern remnants of the Hercynian Forest identify its flora as a mixed one; Oscar Drude identified its Baltic elements associated with North Alpine flora, and North Atlantic species with circumpolar representatives. Similarly, Edward Gibbon noted the presence of reindeer—pseudo-Caesar's bos cervi figura —and elk —pseudo-Caesar's alces —in

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1888-582: The 10th century and the German colonisation of the area starting in the 12th century. With the conquest of the Old Prussian territory by the Teutonic Knights in the 13th century, and the subsequent influx of Polish, Lithuanian and especially German speakers, Old Prussian experienced a 400-year-long decline as an "oppressed language of an oppressed population". Groups of people from Germany, Poland , Lithuania , Scotland , England , and Austria (see Salzburg Protestants ) found refuge in Prussia during

1947-488: The Catechisms display systematical differences in phonology, vocabulary and grammar. Some scholars postulate that this is due to them being recordings of different dialects: Pomesanian and Sambian. Phonetical distinctions are: Pom. ē is Samb. ī ( sweta- : swīta- 'world'); Pom. ō , Samb. ū after a labial ( mōthe [mōte] : mūti 'mother') or Pom. ō , Samb. ā ( tōwis : tāws 'father'; brōte : brāti 'brother'), which influences

2006-719: The Celtic and Germanic words could also be old relatives, or the Celtish word could be borrowed from Germanic. The assimilated *kerku- would be regular in Italo-Celtic , and Pokorny associates the ethnonym Querquerni , found in Hispania in Galicia , which features an Italic-Venetic name. In fact, it is not directly associated to the Hercynian Forest's name. Proto-European * perkʷu- explains ɸerkuniā , later erkunia , with regular shift kʷ > ku that occurred before

2065-662: The Elder , in Natural History , places the eastern regions of the Hercynium jugum , the "Hercynian mountain chain", in Pannonia (present-day Hungary and Croatia ) and Dacia (present-day Romania ). He also gives us some dramaticised description of its composition, in which the close proximity of the forest trees causes competitive struggle among them ( inter se rixantes ). He mentions its gigantic oaks . But even he—if

2124-411: The Maas. The Romanized population came to be known as *walhōz or "strangers" to the Germanic Franks—continued speaking a Late Latin , whose name survives in Walloon . In the past the Romance-Germanic linguistic division that marks Belgium to this day has been perhaps too facilely linked to these geographic parameters. For a time in the sixth century, the Silva Carbonaria formed a barrier between

2183-406: The Old Prussian kurpe , for shoe in contrast to common Low German : Schoh (Standard German Schuh ), as did the High Prussian Oberland subdialect . Until the 1938 changing of place names in East Prussia , Old Prussian river- and place-names, such as Tawe and Tawellningken , could still be found. One of the hypotheses regarding the origin of mazurzenie –

2242-467: The Silva Carbonaria and that of Saint Foillan , in the present-day Sonian Forest (Forêt de Soignes/Zoniënwoud) not far from Nivelles . From the 8th century onwards, parts of the Silva Carbonaria were cleared for agriculture, eventually subdividing it in several smaller isolated forests like the Sonian forest today. The charcoal —which gave the forest its name and into which the once seeming inexhaustible woods were slowly converted—was required to fuel

2301-399: The Silva Carbonaria. The Annales Mettenses Priores note that the wealth of Pepin of Herstal's family was their vast territories between the Silva Carbonaria and the river Meuse. Throughout the rule of the Merovingian dynasty , founded by Clovis, the Silva Carbonaria thus became the boundary between their two kingdoms of Austrasia and Neustria . The Silva Carbonaria is mentioned in

2360-427: The West Frankish kingdom of Clovis and the East Frankish kingdom of Sigebert the Lame , centred on Cologne, until he was assassinated in the forest of Buchaw by his son some time after 507, and Clovis joined the two kingdoms. The Liber Historiae Francorum mentions that the Neustrian army invaded Austrasia in the succession battle of Pepin of Herstal and the war started when Ragenfrid and his army traversed

2419-412: The adage, however, has been argued to be genuinely West Baltic, only an otherwise unattested dialect ): Additionally, there is one manuscript fragment of the first words of the Pater Noster in Prussian, from the beginning of the 15th century: Towe Nüsze kås esse andangonsün swyntins Vytautas Mažiulis lists another few fragmentary texts recorded in several versions by Hieronymus Maletius in

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2478-403: The assimilation *kerku- . The name of the Hercynian Forest is also considered to be etymologically related to Lithuanian thunder god Perkūnas . He is also known as Pērkons in Latvian ; Perkūns or Perkunos in Old Prussian ; Parkuns in Yotvingian and Pārkiuņs in Latgalian . It is possible that the name of the Harz Mountains in Germany is derived from Hercynian, as Harz

2537-420: The author. As the authors of many sources were themselves not proficient in Old Prussian, they wrote the words as they heard them using the orthographical conventions of their mother tongue. For example, the use of ⟨s⟩ for both /s/ and /z/ is based on German orthography. Additionally, the writers misunderstood some phonemes and, when copying manuscripts, they added further mistakes. There

2596-422: The bishoprics of Liège and Cambrai . With the collapse of central Roman administration in the fourth century, Germanic Franks living along the Rhine border established kingdoms within the empire, and settled in less populated areas. The Salian Franks expanded their settlements from a starting point near Nijmegen until they pressed into the more populated and Romanized areas in the Silva Carbonaria and near

2655-417: The boundary between the Roman provinces of Gallia Belgica and Germania Inferior . In the Middle Ages , these provinces were still represented by the church dioceses of Reims and Cologne . On a smaller level, the forest served as a boundary between the Roman civitates of the Tungri to the east and the Nervii to the west. This boundary continued to be used into the Middle ages as the boundary between

2714-408: The consonant sounds except for /j/ , and possibly for /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ . Whether or not the palatalization was phonemic remains unclear. Apart from the palatalizations Proto-Baltic consonants were almost completely preserved. The only changes postulated are turning Proto-Baltic /ʃ, ʒ/ into Prussian /s, z/ and subsequently changing Proto-Baltic /sj/ into /ʃ/ . The following description

2773-411: The deeply folded Ardennes , which are still partly forested to this day. To the east, the forested zone was possibly considered to extend to the Rhine . It was there in Cologne in 388 CE that the magistri militum praesentalis Nannienus and Quintinus began a counter-attack against a Frankish incursion from across the Rhine, which was fought in the Silva Carbonaria. A great Roman road forming

2832-415: The forest. The wild bull which the Romans named the urus was present also, and the European bison and the now-extinct aurochs , Bos primigenius . In the Roman sources, the Hercynian Forest was part of ethnographic Germania. There is an indication that this circumstance was fairly recent; that is, Posidonius states that the Boii , were once there (as well as in Bohemia which is named for them). It

2891-471: The manuscript around 1400; the original dates from the beginning of the 14th or the end of the 13th century. It was found in 1825 by Fr Neumann among other manuscripts acquired by him from the heritage of the Elbing merchant A. Grübnau; it was thus dubbed the Codex Neumannianus . There are separate words found in various historical documents. The following fragments are commonly thought of as Prussian, but are probably actually Lithuanian (at least

2950-475: The nominative suffixes of feminine ā-stems ( crauyō [kraujō] : krawia 'blood'). The nominative suffixes of the masculine o-stems are weakened to -is in Pomesanian; in Sambian they are syncopated ( deywis : deiws 'god'). Vocabulary differences encompass Pom. smoy [zmoy] (cf. Lith. žmuo) , Samb. wijrs 'man'; Pom. wayklis , Samb. soūns 'son' and Pom. samien , Samb. laucks [lauks] 'field'. The neuter gender

3009-483: The passage in question is not an interpolated marginal gloss—is subject to the legends of the gloomy forest. He mentions unusual birds, which have feathers that "shine like fires at night". Medieval bestiaries named these birds the Ercinee . The impenetrable nature of the Hercynia Silva hindered the last concerted Roman foray into the forest, by Drusus , during 12..9 BCE: Florus asserts that Drusus invisum atque inaccessum in id tempus Hercynium saltum (Hercynia saltus,

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3068-454: The scattered smelting furnaces that forged the plentiful iron found in outcroppings laid bare by riverside erosion. Even before the Romans arrived, iron weapons forged in the Silva Carbonaria were traded by the Belgae to their cousins in the southeast of Britain . In the High Middle Ages further woodlands were cleared. Today the most significant remnant of the Silva Carbonaria is the Sonian Forest , preserved because it had been set aside as

3127-414: The second one being a correction of the first. The third catechism, or Enchiridion , consists of 132 pages of text, and is a translation of Luther's Small Catechism by a German cleric called Abel Will, with his Prussian assistant Paul Megott. Will himself knew little or no Old Prussian, and his Prussian interpreter was probably illiterate, but according to Will spoke Old Prussian quite well. The text itself

3186-428: The term Hercynian Forest to the complex of mountain ranges, mountain groups, and plateaus which stretch from Westphalia across Middle Germany and along the northern borders of Austria to the Carpathians . Silva Carbonaria Silva Carbonaria , the "charcoal forest", was the dense old-growth forest of beech and oak that formed a natural boundary during the Late Iron Age through Roman times into

3245-446: The territory of the present Czech Republic , and founded 120 settlements in the Bavarian Forest , as that stretch of the ancient forest came to be known. The forest is also mentioned in Hypnerotomachia Poliphili as the setting for the dream allegory of the work. The German journal Hercynia , published by the Universities and Landesbibliothek of Sachsen-Anhalt, pertains to ecology and environmental biology. Some geographers apply

3304-400: The time of Julius Caesar , this forest blocked the advance of the Roman legions into Germania . His few statements are the most definitive. In De Bello Gallico he says that the forest stretches along the Danube from the territory of the Helvetii (present-day Switzerland ) to Dacia (present-day Romania ). Its implied northern boundary is nine days' march, while its eastern boundary

3363-529: The traditional view is that no instrumental case existed in Old Prussian. There could be some locative forms, e.g. bītai ('in the evening'). Declensional classes were a -stems (also called o -stems), (i)ja -stems (also called (i)jo -stems), ā -stems (feminine), ē -stems (feminine), i -stems, u -stems, and consonant-stems. Some also list ī / jā -stems as a separate stem, while others include jā -stems into ā -stems and do not mention ī -stems at all. There were three adjective stems (

3422-628: Was Prussian toponomy and hydronomy within the territory of (Baltic) Prussia. Georg Gerullis undertook the first basic study of these names in Die altpreußischen Ortsnamen ('The Old Prussian Place-names'), written and published with the help of Walter de Gruyter, in 1922. Another source are personal names. Further sources for Prussian words are Vernacularisms in the German dialects of East and West Prussia, as well as words of Old Curonian origin in Latvian and West-Baltic vernacularisms in Lithuanian and Belarusian. Two Prussian vocabularies are known. The older one by Simon Grunau (Simon Grunovius),

3481-545: Was translated into Revived Prussian by Piotr Szatkowski (Pīteris Šātkis) and published by the Prusaspirā Society in 2015. Moreover, some bands use Revived Prussian, most notably in the Kaliningrad Oblast by the bands Romowe Rikoito , Kellan and Āustras Laīwan, as well as in Lithuania by Kūlgrinda on their 2005 album Prūsų Giesmės ('Prussian Hymns'), and Latvia by Rasa Ensemble in 1988 and Valdis Muktupāvels in his 2005 oratorio "Pārcēlātājs Pontifex" featuring several parts sung in Prussian. The Elbing Vocabulary and

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