About

The Kursenieku (K) language in Curonian Spit is attributed to the endangered languages, there is merely a ten of the speakers left, and thus all its authentic facts are of priceless value to the Baltistics science. Preserving the data was the object of concern for the participants of the international conference in Portugal (Endangered Languages in Europe, Alcanena/ Minde, 2013 ), who plied to take all possible measures to ensure the accessibility of sources to the science.

Purpose of the project: to prepare and supplement the archive of the K. language sources, which could be uploaded into the KU database. The archive consists of: old documents, iconography, cartography and copies of publications (16-19 c.), archive of present days publications, audio and video records, that are held in various science institutions, filmographies, archives, expedition records of Lithuania, Latvia, Germany and other countries.

Especially important are audio records, the major part of which is in the personal archive of the project’s author, which is very dangerous. Due to the lack of financing, the research works are conducted slowly, and the sources remain inaccessible to other scientists. Audio and video records have to be re-recorded in several copies, using renewed technologies.

Prospective aims:

to digitize and decipher the records of the past 10 years,
to rewrite and prepare for use the data of professor F. Hinze‘s manuscript dictionary (8 volumes of manuscript papers),
to select, digitize and archive all the old sources of the Kursenieku language and ethnic culture topics that are known (texts, researches, maps, iconography), newest publications;
to find the undiscovered sources, to prepare archive annotations.

It is intended to summon a group of Latvian and German scientists and to employ other specialists.

Project participants and volunteers

Project manager - prof. dr. Dalia Kiseliūnaitė, Klaipėda University
     Field of scientific interests – Baltic Linguistics, Ethnolinguistics, Geolinguistics
dr. Christiane Schiller, Humboldt University of Berlin
     Field of scientific interests – Baltic Languages, Sociolinguistics, Onomastics
dr. Krišs Kapenieks, Latvian War museum
     Field of scientific interests – History of the Baltic Nations, History of Latvia
dr. Dalia Jakulytė, Klaipėda University
     Field of scientific interests – Philology, Language History, Information Technologies, Databases
     Agnė Vaitiekūnaitė
     Monika Valančienė

Archive staff thanks for volunteering:
Gabrielė Abromavičiūtė-Jasiūnienė
dr. Arūnė Arbušauskaitė
Arvydas Barysas
Frederik Bissinger
dr. Eglė Bukantytė
Kęstutis Demereckas
Herta Detzkeit-Paul
Kristina Gibbisch-Venckus
Austris Grasis
Gediminas Gražulevičius
Carl-Christoph Hilgenfeldt
Albina Kotelnikova
Steffen Nebelung
Denisas Nikitenka
dr. Mykolas Letas Palmaitis
Hermann Pietsch
Irena Pflug–Godow
Raimonda Ravaitytė Meyer
Herbert, Werner ir Martin Sakuth
Christel Sakuth–Tepperis
Manfred Schekahn
dr. Roman Shirouchov