Editing Baltic languages (section)

==History==
{{More citations needed|section|date=September 2018}}
It is believed that the Baltic languages are among the [[conservative (language)|most conservative]] of the currently remaining Indo-European languages,<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dN_s-Ox6EU4C |title=Translation and the Reconfiguration of Power Relations: Revisiting Role and Context of Translation and Interpreting |first1=Beatrice |last1=Fischer |first2=Matilde |last2=Jensen |date=2012 |page=120|publisher=LIT Verlag Münster |isbn=9783643902832 }}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Gelumbeckaitė|2018}}: "... notably East Slavic, which fostered the retention there of features of archaic Indo-European provenience"</ref> despite their late [[Attested language|attestation]].

Although the Baltic [[Aesti]] tribe was mentioned by [[ancient historians]] such as Tacitus as early as 98 CE,<ref>{{cite book|url=https://www.unrv.com/tacitus/tacitusgermania.php |title=Germania |author-link=Tacitus |author=Tacitus|orig-date=98 |chapter=XLV}}</ref> the first attestation of a Baltic language was {{Circa}} 1369, in a Basel [[epigram]] of two lines written in Old Prussian. Lithuanian was first attested in a printed book, which is a [[Catechism]] by [[Martynas Mažvydas]] published in 1547. Latvian appeared in a printed Catechism in 1585.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CXxdDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA34 |title=The Foundations of Latin |author-last=Baldi |author-first=Philip |publisher=[[Walter de Gruyter]] |date=2002 |pages=34–35 |isbn=3-11-016294-6}}</ref>

One reason for the late attestation is that the Baltic peoples [[Northern Crusades|resisted Christianization]] longer than any other Europeans, which delayed the introduction of writing and isolated their languages from outside influence.{{citation needed|date=April 2014}}

With the establishment of a [[History of Germany|German]] state in Prussia, and the mass influx of Germanic (and to a lesser degree Slavic-speaking) settlers, the Prussians began to be assimilated, and by the end of the 17th century, the Prussian language had become extinct.

After the [[Partitions of Poland|Partitions of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth]], most of the Baltic lands were under the rule of the [[Russian Empire]], where the native languages or alphabets were sometimes prohibited from being written down or used publicly in a [[Russification]] effort (see [[Lithuanian press ban]] for the ban in force from 1864 to 1904).<ref>{{cite book|url=http://www.llti.lt/failai/Vaicekausko%20straipnis_compressed.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://www.llti.lt/failai/Vaicekausko%20straipnis_compressed.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live |title=Lithuanian Handwritten Books in the Period of the Ban on the Lithuanian Press (1864–1904) |author-first=Mikas |author-last=Vaicekauskas}}</ref>