And finally...

I'm having some fantastic heated debates with the Lithuanians today over this gravestone inscription, but that's not why I want to work on this project. Simply, and without getting caught up in the Lithuanian nationalist psyche, I’m trying to find out what it is to be Lithuanian. Language seems to be a way of doing it that you can’t really argue with for very long. Anyway, the aforementioned inscription is no longer with us like the person lying underneath it, but it’s clear that it’s either New Curonian, Somogitian or a mangling of the two. Basically, it’s proto-Lithuanian, or more accurately a dialect that’s no longer spoken in contemporary Lithuania. The Polish spellings are interesting albeit obvious.

Here’s what it says.

Here lies with God
My dear wife*
And our dear mother
Marinke Matzpreiksch
Born June 12, 1873
Died October 2, 1912**

* The Lithuanian word for man and husband is the same, vyras. I’m betting that it used to be the same for woman and wife. The actual modern literal translation of this line is My dear woman.

** I missed the year from the original post.

The really interesting thing about this is that once you’ve arrived at the fact that the writing’s Lithuanian, you still can’t ignore the fact that the woman had a German name. And the really really interesting fact about it is that the (Germanic) word Oktober is no longer in use in Lithuanian (whereas it’s crept into Latvian (Oktobris), which was once the same language as Lithuania. The Lithuanians now use spalis. This is like literary ethnic cleansing!