Old Prussian is an extinct West Baltic language belonging to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European languages, which was once spoken by 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 a revival movement of Old Prussian, and there are families which use Old Prussian as their first language.
Lithuanian is an East Baltic language belonging to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is the language of Lithuanians and the official language of Lithuania as well as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are approximately 2.8 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 1 million speakers elsewhere. Around half a million inhabitants of Lithuania of non-Lithuanian background speak Lithuanian daily as a second language.
The term Galindian is sometimes ascribed to two separate Baltic languages, both of which were peripheral dialects:
The Curonian language, or Old Curonian, was a Baltic language spoken by the Curonians, a Baltic tribe who inhabited Courland.
The river Neris or Vilija rises in northern Belarus. It flows westward, passing through Vilnius and in the south-centre of that country it flows into the Nemunas (Neman) from the right bank, at Kaunas, as its main tributary. Its length is 510 km (320 mi).
Yotvingians were a Western Baltic people who were closely tied to the Old Prussians. The linguist Petras Būtėnas asserts that they were closest to the Lithuanians. The Yotvingians contributed to the formation of the Lithuanian state.
Vaišvilkas or Vaišelga was Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1264 until his death in 1267. He was a son of Mindaugas, the first and only Christian King of Lithuania.
The East Baltic languages are a group of languages that along with the extinct West Baltic languages belong to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family. The East Baltic branch primarily consists of two extant languages—Latvian and Lithuanian. Occasionally, Latgalian and Samogitian are viewed as distinct languages, though they are traditionally regarded as dialects. It also includes now-extinct Selonian, Semigallian, and possibly Old Curonian.
Proto-Baltic is the unattested, reconstructed ancestral proto-language of all Baltic languages. It is not attested in writing, but has been partly reconstructed through the comparative method by gathering the collected data on attested Baltic and other Indo-European languages. It represents the common Baltic speech that approximately was spoken between the 3rd millennium BC and ca. 5th century BC, after which it began dividing into West and East Baltic languages. Proto-Baltic is thought to have been a fusional language and is associated with the Corded Ware and Trzciniec cultures.
The Scalovians, also known as the Skalvians, Schalwen and Schalmen, were a Baltic tribe related to the Prussians. According to the Chronicon terrae Prussiae of Peter of Dusburg, the now extinct Scalovians inhabited the land of Scalovia south of the Curonians and Samogitians, by the lower Neman River ca. 1240.
Zigmas Zinkevičius was a Lithuanian academician, Baltist, linguist, linguistic historian, dialectologist, politician, and the former Minister of Education and Science of Lithuania (1996–1998). Zinkevičius authored over a hundred books, including the popular six-volume "History of the Lithuanian Language" (1984–1994), and over a thousand articles, both in Lithuanian and other languages. He was an academician of the Lithuanian Catholic Academy of Science since 1991 and a full member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences from 1990 to 2011, when he became an emeritus member.
The West Baltic languages are a group of extinct Baltic languages that were spoken by West Baltic peoples. West Baltic is one of the two primary branches of Baltic languages, along with East Baltic. It includes Old Prussian, Sudovian, West Galindian, possibly Skalvian and Old Curonian.
The Science and Encyclopaedia Publishing Centre is a Lithuanian publishing house that specializes in encyclopedias, reference works, and dictionaries. The Institute, headquartered in Vilnius, is supported by the Lithuanian Republic's Ministry of Education and Science.
The Prussian mythology was a polytheistic religion of the Old Prussians, indigenous peoples of Prussia before the Prussian Crusade waged by the Teutonic Knights. It was closely related to other Baltic faiths, the Lithuanian and Latvian mythologies. Its myths and legends did not survive as Prussians became Germanized and their culture went extinct in the early 18th century. Fragmentary information on gods and rituals can be found in various medieval chronicles, but most of them are unreliable. No sources document pagan religion before the forced Christianization in the 13th century. Most of what is known about Prussian religion is obtained from dubious 16th-century sources.
Merkelis Petkevičius was a Reformation (Calvinist) activist in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. He was a nobleman who worked as a court scribe in Vilnius for almost thirty years. In 1598, he published the first Lithuanian-language Protestant book printed in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. This book, a bilingual catechism in Polish and Lithuanian, was published in response to the publication of the Roman Catholic catechism of Mikalojus Daukša. However, book's heavy, artificial language with numerous loanwords make it linguistically inferior to Daukša's work.
Česlovas Gedgaudas was a Lithuanian diplomat, translator, polyglot, and amateur historian. He is best known for his pseudohistorical book In the Search for Our Past, in which he promoted the claims of Jurate Rosales and Aleksandras Račkus that the Goths and Vandals were Baltic peoples, and not Germanic or Slavic.
Aleksandras Vanagas was Lithuanian linguist, one of the leading Lithuanian etymologists.
Friedrich Kurschat was a Prussian Lithuanian linguist and professor at the University of Königsberg. He studied the Lithuanian language and published its grammar in 1876 in which he was the first to describe Lithuanian accentuation in detail.
Petras Būtėnas was a Lithuanian linguist and public figure. His work was very important in the research of Lithuanian culture.
Compendium Grammaticæ Lithvanicæ is a prescriptive printed grammar of the Lithuanian language, which was one of the first attempts to standardize the Lithuanian language. The grammar was intended for pastors who knew little or no Lithuanian so that they could learn the language and communicate with their Lithuanian-speaking parishioners.
