The Old Prussian Alphabet

Q: How many letters does the Old Prussian alphabet have?

The Old Prussian alphabet contains 26 letters — the full Latin alphabet — consisting of 5 vowels (A, E, I, O, U) and 21 consonants. In addition, historical Old Prussian texts used 8 documented digraphs (two-letter combinations) including ch, sch, qu, and the diphthongs ai, au, and ei. Modern revival orthography also employs macrons (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū) to mark vowel length, which was not consistently indicated in the original manuscripts.

Q: Is Old Prussian the same as German?

No. Old Prussian is a Baltic language of the Indo-European family, making it closely related to Lithuanian and Latvian rather than to German. Despite the name, Old Prussian has no direct linguistic connection to the German language. The confusion arises because the Teutonic Knights conquered Prussian territory in the 13th century, displacing Old Prussian culture and eventually replacing the language with German. The Old Prussian people (the Prūsai) were a Baltic tribe; the German-speaking state of Prussia was a later political entity that adopted the name of the territory.

Q: Why did Old Prussian go extinct?

Old Prussian became extinct through a combination of factors spanning several centuries. Following the Teutonic Knights' conquest in the 13th century , Old Prussian speakers faced sustained pressure from German colonisation, religious conversion, and cultural suppression. The language retreated to rural, lower-class populations. The final blow came from the Great Plague of 1709–1711 , which killed up to 80% of the rural population of East Prussia during the Great Northern War, eliminating the last isolated communities of Old Prussian speakers. The last known native speaker is traditionally dated to around 1677 on the Curonian Spit , though some sources place the extinction as late as circa 1700.

Q: Are there any surviving Old Prussian texts?

Yes, several key texts survive. The most important are: The Elbing Vocabulary (c. 1400) — a German–Old Prussian glossary of approximately 800 words organised by subject, copied by Peter Holcwesscher. Three Catechisms — two published in 1545 and one, the Enchiridion, in 1561 with the help of a native Prussian informant named Paul Megott. Simon Grunau's Vocabulary (c. 1517–1526) — approximately 100 words in his Preussische Chronik. These texts are remarkable survivals that allow scholars to reconstruct much of Old Prussian phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, despite the inconsistencies introduced by German-speaking scribes.

Q: Is Old Prussian being revived?

Yes, Old Prussian is the subject of an active language revival movement that began in the 1980s and 1990s. Linguist Letas Palmaitis (Mikkels Klussis) developed a modern revival orthography using macrons for vowel length and cedillas for palatalization. As of 2021, approximately 3 L1 revival speakers and ~50 L2 speakers have been documented. In recognition of this revival, the ISO 639-3 code prg was reclassified from Extinct to Living on 2009-07-03. There are now dictionaries, grammars, and online resources supporting the revived language.

Q: What language family does Old Prussian belong to?

Old Prussian belongs to the West Baltic branch of the Balto-Slavic sub-family of the Indo-European language family . It is the principal and best-documented member of West Baltic. Its closest surviving relatives are Lithuanian and Latvian (East Baltic languages), though Old Prussian had already diverged significantly from the East Baltic branch by the time it was documented. Old Prussian shares cognates with both Baltic and Slavic languages, preserving several archaic Indo-European features that have been lost in its relatives.

Old Prussian Alphabet at a Glance

26 letters: 5 vowels and 21 consonants, written using the Latin script
Extinct West Baltic language of the Balto-Slavic branch of Indo-European ^[1]
Written using the Latin script, recorded in Middle Low German-influenced orthography from the 14th–17th centuries ^[2]
Classified as a living language since 2009 due to modern revival efforts ^[3]
8 documented digraphs (ch, ck, ij, qu, sch, ai, au, ei) reflect Baltic sounds adapted through German scribal conventions
Preserved in the Elbing Vocabulary (c. 1400) and the Enchiridion catechism (1561), the primary historical sources ^[4]
Spoken in historical Prussia (modern northeastern Poland and Kaliningrad Oblast) until c. 1700

Old Prussian Vowels (Uppercase)

[AH]

[EH]

[EE]

[OH]

[OO]

Old Prussian Vowels (Lowercase)

[AH]

[EH]

[EE]

[OH]

[OO]

Old Prussian Consonants (Uppercase)

[BEH]

[SEH]

[DEH]

[EFF]

[GEH]

[HAH]

[YEH]

[KAH]

[ELL]

[EHM]

[EHN]

[PEH]

[KOO]

[EHR]

[ESS]

[TEH]

[VEH]

[VAH]

[EKS]

[EE-GRIP-SEL]

[ZEH]

[BEH]

Uppercase B — voiced bilabial stop /b/. Used at the start of sentences and proper nouns in modern scholarly editions and revival-language texts of Old Prussian.

[SEH]

Uppercase C — represents /k/ before back vowels and /ts/ before front vowels, following German scribal convention. Appears in proper nouns and sentence-initial positions in modern editions.

[DEH]

Uppercase D — voiced alveolar stop /d/. Used to capitalise words beginning with the /d/ sound in contemporary scholarly transcriptions and revival-orthography publications.

[EFF]

Uppercase F — voiceless labiodental fricative /f/. Occurs mainly in capitalised loanwords from German and Latin that appear in Old Prussian texts as proper nouns or titles.

[GEH]

Uppercase G — voiced velar stop /g/. Used in proper nouns and at sentence beginnings in modern scholarly editions of the Elbing Vocabulary and Enchiridion texts.

[HAH]

Uppercase H — voiceless glottal fricative /h/. Also the first letter of the digraph ⟨Ch⟩ representing the velar fricative /x/; capitals are used in modern editions for sentence-initial positions.

[YEH]

Uppercase J — palatal approximant /j/. Used at the start of words and proper names in modern revival orthography and contemporary scholarly editions of Old Prussian texts.

[KAH]

Uppercase K — voiceless velar stop /k/. Consistently represents /k/ regardless of following vowel; used in capitalised positions in scholarly transcriptions of Old Prussian manuscripts.

[ELL]

Uppercase L — lateral alveolar approximant /l/. Used in capitalised words and proper nouns in modern scholarly and revival-language editions of Old Prussian texts.

[EHM]

Uppercase M — bilabial nasal /m/. Appears frequently in capitalised positions in modern editions; many high-frequency Old Prussian words begin with /m/, cognate with Lithuanian and Latvian equivalents.

[EHN]

Uppercase N — alveolar nasal /n/. Used at the start of sentences and proper names in modern scholarly transcriptions; the nasal is one of the most common consonants in Old Prussian.

[PEH]

Uppercase P — voiceless bilabial stop /p/. Used to capitalise words beginning with /p/ in modern editions; ⟨P⟩ also begins the digraph ⟨Qu⟩ as part of the /kw/ cluster representation.

[KOO]

Uppercase Q — only appears as part of the digraph ⟨Qu⟩ representing /kw/. Never used alone in Old Prussian; the capital form occurs sentence-initially in words beginning with the /kw/ cluster.

[EHR]

Uppercase R — alveolar trill or tap /r/. Used in capitalised positions in modern editions of Old Prussian texts; the trill /r/ is a typical feature of Baltic language phonology.

[ESS]

Uppercase S — voiceless alveolar fricative /s/. Used to capitalise sentence-initial and proper-noun-initial positions; ⟨S⟩ also begins the digraph ⟨Sch⟩ representing /ʃ/ in German scribal convention.

[TEH]

Uppercase T — voiceless alveolar stop /t/. One of the most common initial consonants in Old Prussian; used frequently in capitalised positions in modern scholarly transcriptions of the Elbing Vocabulary.

[VEH]

Uppercase V — labio-dental fricative /v/ or labio-velar /w/ depending on scribe; used in capitalised positions in modern scholarly editions that follow the original manuscript orthography.

[VAH]

Uppercase W — labio-velar approximant /w/, the archaic Baltic consonant corresponding to Lithuanian /v/. Used in capitalised positions in modern revival texts and scholarly transcriptions of Old Prussian.

[EKS]

Uppercase X — /ks/ cluster following Latin/German convention. Rare in native Old Prussian roots; appears mainly in capitalised Latin loanwords and proper names in the manuscript texts.

[EE-GRIP-SEL]

Uppercase Y — used for long /iː/ or palatal /j/ depending on manuscript tradition. Appears capitalised in modern editions at the start of words where the scribes used ⟨y⟩ for the long close front vowel.

[ZEH]

Uppercase Z — voiced alveolar fricative /z/. Used at the start of words and proper nouns in modern scholarly editions; some Old Prussian /z/ forms correspond to Lithuanian ⟨ž⟩ (voiced postalveolar fricative).

Old Prussian Consonants (Lowercase)

[BEH]

[SEH]

[DEH]

[EFF]

[GEH]

[HAH]

[YEH]

[KAH]

[ELL]

[EHM]

[EHN]

[PEH]

[KOO]

[EHR]

[ESS]

[TEH]

[VEH]

[VAH]

[EKS]

[EE-GRIP-SEL]

[ZEH]

[BEH]

Voiced bilabial stop /b/, like "b" in "bed". A standard consonant in Old Prussian, attested throughout the Elbing Vocabulary and the Enchiridion with consistent /b/ value.

[SEH]

Used as /k/ before back vowels (a, o, u) and as /ts/ before front vowels (e, i), following German scribal convention. This dual value reflects the influence of Middle Low German orthographic practice on Baltic phonology transcription.

[DEH]

Voiced alveolar stop /d/, like "d" in "dog". Attested throughout Old Prussian manuscripts; Letas Palmaitis's revival orthography preserves this standard value without modification.

[EFF]

Voiceless labiodental fricative /f/, like "f" in "fish". Relatively rare in native Old Prussian roots; more common in loanwords from German and Latin that entered Old Prussian texts.

[GEH]

Voiced velar stop /g/, like "g" in "go". A standard consonant in Old Prussian; the Enchiridion uses ⟨g⟩ consistently for the voiced velar stop, distinct from the /k/ value of ⟨c⟩.

[HAH]

Voiceless glottal fricative /h/, like "h" in "hat". Present in Old Prussian texts, though it also appears in the digraph ⟨ch⟩ where it contributes to the velar fricative /x/ sound of Scottish "loch".

[YEH]

Palatal approximant /j/, like "y" in "yes". This is the standard value of ⟨j⟩ in Old Prussian, reflecting Baltic phonology where the palatal glide is a common initial consonant, cognate with Lithuanian ⟨j⟩.

[KAH]

Voiceless velar stop /k/, like "k" in "key". Distinguished from ⟨c⟩ (which also represents /k/ before back vowels) in that ⟨k⟩ consistently represents the voiceless velar stop regardless of the following vowel.

[ELL]

Lateral alveolar approximant /l/, like "l" in "light". A common consonant in Old Prussian attested frequently in the Elbing Vocabulary; Old Prussian also had a palatalised variant /lʲ/ in some positions.

[EHM]

Bilabial nasal /m/, like "m" in "man". One of the most common consonants in Old Prussian, attested in high-frequency words throughout the Elbing Vocabulary and the three catechism texts.

[EHN]

Alveolar nasal /n/, like "n" in "nose". Appears very frequently in Old Prussian texts; like Lithuanian, Old Prussian had both plain and palatalised nasals depending on context.

[PEH]

Voiceless bilabial stop /p/, like "p" in "pen". A standard consonant in Old Prussian roots; ⟨p⟩ also appears in the digraph ⟨qu⟩ as part of the /kw/ cluster, though the ⟨q⟩ itself carries the velar stop.

[KOO]

Never used alone in Old Prussian; only occurs in the digraph ⟨qu⟩ representing the labio-velar /kw/ cluster. This follows Latin and German scribal convention; the letter ⟨q⟩ without ⟨u⟩ does not appear in Old Prussian manuscripts.

[EHR]

Alveolar trill or tap /r/, like "r" in Spanish "pero". Old Prussian ⟨r⟩ likely represented an alveolar trill, cognate with Lithuanian /r/ and Latvian /r/, common throughout Baltic languages.

[ESS]

Voiceless alveolar fricative /s/, like "s" in "sun". One of the most frequent consonants in Old Prussian; ⟨s⟩ also begins the digraph ⟨sch⟩ representing /ʃ/ under German scribal influence.

[TEH]

Voiceless alveolar stop /t/, like "t" in "top". A very common consonant in Old Prussian root words; Old Prussian preserved archaic Baltic dental consonants cognate with Sanskrit and Latin forms.

[VEH]

In Old Prussian texts, ⟨v⟩ may represent the labio-dental fricative /v/ or alternate with ⟨w⟩ for the labio-velar approximant /w/; the scribes used both letters somewhat inconsistently for labial consonants.

[VAH]

Labio-velar approximant /w/, corresponding to the /v/ of modern Lithuanian and Latvian. Old Prussian ⟨w⟩ reflects the archaic Baltic labio-velar consonant that later shifted to labiodental /v/ in the East Baltic languages.

[EKS]

In Old Prussian texts, ⟨x⟩ typically represents the /ks/ cluster, following Latin and German convention. It is rare in native Old Prussian words and more commonly found in Latin loanwords and proper names in the manuscripts.

[EE-GRIP-SEL]

Used in Old Prussian manuscripts as a long /iː/ vowel or as a palatal approximant /j/ depending on position. The value of ⟨y⟩ varies across the different manuscript traditions; the Enchiridion uses it most consistently as /iː/.

[ZEH]

Voiced alveolar fricative /z/, like "z" in "zoo". Present in Old Prussian texts, particularly in words cognate with Lithuanian ž- forms; the scribes sometimes used ⟨z⟩ where the sound alternates with /s/ in related Baltic languages.

Old Prussian Digraphs (Uppercase)

[EYE]

[OW]

[KHAH]

[KAH]

[AY]

[EE]

[KWA]

Sch

[SHEH]

[EYE]

Uppercase form of digraph ⟨ai⟩ — diphthong /ai/ like "aisle". Used at the start of sentences or proper nouns beginning with this Baltic diphthong in modern scholarly and revival-orthography editions.

[OW]

Uppercase form of digraph ⟨au⟩ — diphthong /au/ like "house". Used in capitalised positions in modern scholarly editions; this diphthong is one of the most distinctively Baltic phonological features of Old Prussian.

[KHAH]

Uppercase form of digraph ⟨ch⟩ — velar fricative /x/ like Scottish "loch". Used at the start of words in sentence-initial and proper-noun-initial positions in modern scholarly transcriptions of Old Prussian manuscripts.

[KAH]

Uppercase form of digraph ⟨ck⟩ — reinforced /k/ following German orthographic convention. Rare in initial position; appears in sentence-initial positions in modern editions when the original Old Prussian word begins with this reinforced stop.

[AY]

Uppercase form of digraph ⟨ei⟩ — diphthong /ei/ like "vein". Used at the start of sentences and proper nouns beginning with this Baltic diphthong in modern scholarly and revival-orthography publications.

[EE]

Uppercase form of digraph ⟨ij⟩ — long /iː/ or palatalization marker. Used in capitalised positions in modern revival-orthography texts following the conventions established by Letas Palmaitis.

[KWA]

Uppercase form of digraph ⟨qu⟩ — labio-velar /kw/ cluster like "qu" in "queen". Used at the start of sentences and proper nouns beginning with the /kw/ cluster in modern scholarly editions of Old Prussian.

Sch

[SHEH]

Uppercase form of trigraph ⟨sch⟩ — /ʃ/ like "sh" in "ship". Used at the start of sentences and proper nouns in modern scholarly editions; follows German orthographic convention introduced by the Enchiridion compilers.

Old Prussian Digraphs (Lowercase)

[EYE]

[OW]

[KHAH]

[KAH]

[AY]

[EE]

[KWA]

sch

[SHEH]

[EYE]

Diphthong /ai/, like "ai" in "aisle". A native Baltic diphthong found throughout Old Prussian vocabulary; cognate forms appear in Lithuanian (ai) and Latvian (ai), making this one of the most recognisably Baltic features of the language.

[OW]

Diphthong /au/, like "ou" in "house". One of the three native Baltic diphthongs; cognate with Lithuanian ⟨au⟩ and Latvian ⟨au⟩. Attested frequently in the Elbing Vocabulary in core Baltic vocabulary items.

[KHAH]

Velar fricative /x/, like "ch" in Scottish "loch" or German "Bach". Follows German scribal convention; the sound /x/ is a common consonant in Baltic language phonology and was transcribed by the German-speaking catechism compilers using their native digraph ⟨ch⟩.

[KAH]

Reinforced velar stop /k/, like the "ck" in German "backen". This digraph reflects German orthographic convention used by the scribes of the Enchiridion to represent a firm /k/ sound, particularly in medial and final positions.

[AY]

Diphthong /ei/, like "ei" in "vein". The third native Baltic diphthong preserved in Old Prussian; cognate with Lithuanian ⟨ei⟩. Distinguishable from the monophthong /eː/ in the reconstructed Old Prussian phonological system.

[EE]

Represents long /iː/ or a palatalization marker depending on context. Used in Old Prussian manuscripts to indicate the long close front vowel or a preceding consonant's palatal quality; Letas Palmaitis's revival orthography uses ⟨ij⟩ for specific long vowel contexts.

[KWA]

Labio-velar /kw/ cluster, like "qu" in "queen". Follows Latin and German scribal convention where ⟨q⟩ only ever appears before ⟨u⟩ to represent the /kw/ sound; attested in Old Prussian texts in words with the labio-velar onset.

sch

[SHEH]

Voiceless postalveolar fricative /ʃ/, like "sh" in "ship". Follows German orthographic convention where ⟨sch⟩ is the standard trigraph for /ʃ/; the German-speaking compilers of the Enchiridion used this convention to transcribe the /ʃ/ sound in Old Prussian words.

First letter of the Old Prussian alphabet — open central vowel /a/. Appears frequently in Old Prussian root words; the long variant /aː/ is distinguished in modern revival orthography by the macron ⟨ā⟩.

Second letter — voiced bilabial stop /b/. Standard consonant attested throughout the Elbing Vocabulary and the Enchiridion catechism with consistent /b/ value.

Third letter — dual value: /k/ before back vowels and /ts/ before front vowels, reflecting German scribal convention applied to Baltic phonology by the Enchiridion compilers.

Fourth letter — voiced alveolar stop /d/. Attested consistently throughout Old Prussian manuscripts; preserves archaic Baltic dental consonant forms cognate with Sanskrit and Latin equivalents.

Fifth letter — mid front vowel /e/. Old Prussian preserved the Baltic majhul distinction between short /e/ and long /eː/, a feature visible in etymological comparisons with Lithuanian cognates.

Sixth letter — voiceless labiodental fricative /f/. Relatively rare in native Old Prussian roots; more common in loanwords from German and Latin that appear in the Enchiridion and related texts.

Seventh letter — voiced velar stop /g/. Used consistently in the Enchiridion for the voiced velar stop; distinct from the velar stop value sometimes carried by ⟨c⟩ before back vowels.

Eighth letter — voiceless glottal fricative /h/; also the first letter of the digraph ⟨ch⟩ representing the velar fricative /x/. The glottal /h/ is less common alone than as part of this digraph.

Ninth letter — close front vowel /i/. Used both as a pure vowel and, in some contexts, as a glide; the digraph ⟨ij⟩ marks the long /iː/ more explicitly in Old Prussian orthography.

Tenth letter — palatal approximant /j/ like "y" in "yes". Standard value in Old Prussian, reflecting Baltic phonology where the palatal glide is a common initial consonant; cognate with Lithuanian ⟨j⟩.

Eleventh letter — voiceless velar stop /k/. Consistently represents /k/ regardless of following vowel, distinguishing it from ⟨c⟩ which has the velar stop value only before back vowels.

Twelfth letter — lateral alveolar approximant /l/. A very common consonant in Old Prussian; the language also had a palatalised variant /lʲ/ in some positions, preserved in certain forms of the Elbing Vocabulary.

Thirteenth letter — bilabial nasal /m/. One of the most common consonants in Old Prussian, appearing in high-frequency vocabulary items throughout the Elbing Vocabulary and the three catechism texts.

Fourteenth letter — alveolar nasal /n/. Very frequent in Old Prussian texts; like Lithuanian, Old Prussian had both plain and palatalised nasal consonants, with the palatal variant indicated by following vowels.

Fifteenth letter — mid back vowel /o/. The long /oː/ was distinct in Old Prussian phonology; modern revival orthography uses the macron ⟨ō⟩ to mark this length distinction absent from historical manuscripts.

Sixteenth letter — voiceless bilabial stop /p/. A standard consonant in Old Prussian root words; also the initial letter of the digraph representation for /kw/ through the convention ⟨qu⟩.

Seventeenth letter — only used as part of the digraph ⟨qu⟩ for the /kw/ cluster, never alone. Follows Latin and German scribal convention; ⟨q⟩ without ⟨u⟩ does not appear in Old Prussian manuscripts.

Eighteenth letter — alveolar trill or tap /r/. A common consonant throughout Old Prussian texts; the trill /r/ is a typical feature of Baltic language phonology shared with Lithuanian and Latvian.

Nineteenth letter — voiceless alveolar fricative /s/. One of the most frequent consonants in Old Prussian; also the first letter of the digraph ⟨sch⟩ representing /ʃ/ under German scribal influence.

Twentieth letter — voiceless alveolar stop /t/. A very common consonant in Old Prussian root words; the language preserved archaic Baltic dental consonants cognate with Sanskrit and Latin forms.

Twenty-first letter — close back vowel /u/. Old Prussian ⟨u⟩ represents both short /u/ and long /uː/; also appears in the diphthong ⟨au⟩ and as the second element of the digraph ⟨qu⟩.

Twenty-second letter — labio-dental /v/ or labio-velar /w/ depending on scribe; the two letters ⟨v⟩ and ⟨w⟩ were used somewhat inconsistently by different scribes for labial consonants in Old Prussian.

Twenty-third letter — labio-velar approximant /w/, the archaic Baltic consonant that shifted to labiodental /v/ in modern Lithuanian and Latvian. A phonologically important letter distinguishing Old Prussian from its East Baltic relatives.

Twenty-fourth letter — /ks/ cluster following Latin and German convention. Rare in native Old Prussian roots; more commonly found in Latin loanwords and proper names in the manuscript texts.

Twenty-fifth letter — used for long /iː/ vowel or palatal approximant /j/ depending on manuscript tradition. The Enchiridion uses ⟨y⟩ most consistently as /iː/; the letter name "i-grec" (Greek i) reflects its Latin origin.

Twenty-sixth letter — voiced alveolar fricative /z/. Present in Old Prussian texts in words cognate with Lithuanian ⟨ž⟩ forms; some scribes used ⟨z⟩ for sounds that correspond to the voiced postalveolar fricative in related Baltic languages.

Digits (0–9)

[ZEE-ROH]

[WUN]

[TOO]

[THREE]

[FOR]

[FYV]

[SIKS]

[SEV-EN]

[AYT]

[NYN]

[ZEE-ROH]

The digit zero. Old Prussian historical texts used Roman numerals (I, V, X, L, C, D, M) rather than Arabic-Hindu numerals; the concept of zero as a placeholder numeral was not part of the medieval Latin scribal tradition used in Old Prussian manuscripts.

[WUN]

The digit one. In historical Old Prussian texts, the numeral I (Roman one) was used. Modern scholarship uses Arabic-Hindu numerals to reference dates (e.g., the Enchiridion of 1561) and word counts in the surviving Old Prussian texts.

[TOO]

The digit two. Old Prussian texts used Roman II for the numeral two. Contemporary linguists use Arabic-Hindu numerals when discussing Old Prussian in modern academic publications, grammar guides, and revival-language materials.

[THREE]

The digit three. Roman III was used in historical Old Prussian documents. Modern scholars note there are three main groups of Old Prussian texts: the Elbing Vocabulary, the Catechisms, and Simon Grunau's Vocabulary.

[FOR]

The digit four. Roman IV was used in historical texts. Scholars reference four principal surviving Old Prussian manuscript sources, written between approximately 1400 and 1561, as the entire corpus of the language.

[FYV]

The digit five. Roman V was used in historical Old Prussian texts. Modern scholarship identifies five vowel phonemes (a, e, i, o, u) in the reconstructed Old Prussian phonological system, each existing in short and long variants.

[SIKS]

The digit six. Roman VI was used in historical documents. Old Prussian linguist Letas Palmaitis identified six dialectal varieties within the surviving Old Prussian corpus, reflecting regional variation across historical Prussia.

[SEV-EN]

The digit seven. Roman VII was used in historical Old Prussian texts. The Elbing Vocabulary, the most important Old Prussian text, organises its approximately 800 words across seven main thematic sections.

[AYT]

The digit eight. Roman VIII was used in historical texts. Old Prussian has eight documented digraphs (ai, au, ch, ck, ei, ij, qu, sch) representing sounds that required two-letter combinations under German scribal conventions.

[NYN]

The digit nine. Roman IX was used in historical Old Prussian documents. Modern revival efforts, ongoing since the 1980s, have produced nine major reconstruction grammars and dictionaries restoring the Old Prussian language to active use.

;

—

(

)

[

]

Period — sentence terminator used in modern scholarly editions and revival-language publications of Old Prussian texts. Historical manuscripts used different scribal conventions for sentence endings.

Comma — clause separator used in modern scholarly editions and transcriptions of Old Prussian. Medieval scribes of the Elbing Vocabulary and Enchiridion used different punctuation conventions than modern editors apply.

Exclamation mark — expressive punctuation used in modern revival-language texts and popular publications about Old Prussian. Not part of the original medieval manuscript tradition.

Question mark — interrogative marker used in modern scholarly editions and revival-language materials. The Enchiridion catechism used its own scribal conventions for marking questions.

;

Semicolon — clause separator used in modern scholarly transcriptions of Old Prussian texts, following contemporary academic publishing conventions for editions of historical languages.

Colon — introduces lists and explanations in modern scholarly editions of Old Prussian and in contemporary grammar guides for the revived language.

Hyphen — used in modern Old Prussian scholarship to connect morphological elements in phonetic transcriptions and in compound words in revival-orthography texts.

—

Em-dash — used in modern scholarly publications about Old Prussian for parenthetical remarks and to mark interruptions in the reconstructed texts and revival-language literature.

Apostrophe — used in modern scholarly transcriptions of Old Prussian to mark glottal stops, elisions, and in some revival-orthography proposals to indicate palatalisation of preceding consonants.

Double quotation mark — used in modern scholarly editions of Old Prussian to indicate direct citations from the Elbing Vocabulary, the Enchiridion, and other primary sources of the language.

(

Left parenthesis — used in modern scholarly editions and linguistic analyses of Old Prussian to enclose reconstructed forms, etymological notes, and phonemic transcriptions.

)

Right parenthesis — closes parenthetical remarks, reconstructed forms, and etymological annotations in modern scholarly editions and revival-language grammars of Old Prussian.

[

Left square bracket — used in modern scholarly editions of Old Prussian to enclose editorial insertions, uncertain readings from damaged manuscript passages, and phonetic transcriptions.

]

Right square bracket — closes editorial insertions and phonetic transcriptions in modern scholarly editions of Old Prussian manuscripts including the Elbing Vocabulary and Enchiridion.

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How many letters does the Old Prussian alphabet have?

Is Old Prussian the same as German?

Why did Old Prussian go extinct?

Are there any surviving Old Prussian texts?

Is Old Prussian being revived?

What language family does Old Prussian belong to?

References:

[1] Glottolog 5.x. "Old Prussian [prus1238]". Retrieved from Glottolog: Old Prussian
[2] Unicode Consortium. "Basic Latin Unicode Block (U+0000-U+007F)". Retrieved from Unicode Basic Latin
[3] SIL International. "ISO 639-3 Language Code: prg — Old Prussian". Retrieved from SIL ISO 639-3: prg
[4] Vytautas Magnus University. "The Elbing Vocabulary (c. 1400) — Old Prussian Language Monuments". Retrieved from VDU: Elbing Vocabulary PDF