Polish language would look better written in Cyrillic Script?

Read here for more details, do you agree?

steen.free.fr/cyrpol/index.html

Perhaps. I always did find Cyrillic more interesting looking. Found this;
Поврóтъ Таты, пр̌езъ А. Мицкевича

Пóйдзьце о дзятки, пóйдзьце вшистке разэм
За място, подъ слупъ на взгóрэкъ,
Тамъ пр̌едъ цудовнымъ клęкнийце образэмъ,
Побожне змóвце пацёрэкъ.

Тато не враца ранки и вечоры
Вэ Лзах го чекамъ и трводзэ;
Розлялы р̌еки, пэлнэ звер̌а боры,
И пэлно збóйцóвъ на дродзэ;-

steen.free.fr/cyrpol/index.html

Cyrillic was first adopted following the death of St. Cyril, resp. Kiril, and was used to adapt to those languages (including Greek, a NON-Slavic language!!) whose pronunciation systems corresponded to non-Latinate letters. Polish, Slovene, Croatian, Czech and several others which were originally part of the original Cyrillic group have long since used the Latin alphabet. It would indeed seem strange, even if politically understandable, for the above languages to "revert", so to speak, to the Cyrillic alphabet since their sounds may or may not match any longer the Cyrillic letters, many of which have been dropped over the centuries, such as in Russian and Bulgarian..

Why did missionaries who introduced the Cyrillic alphabet and Eastern Orthodox faith to the Eastern Slavs stop and not continue on into Poland and Bohemia (Czech Rep.) and Hungary?

Oh, but they did. It had merely more to do with a political/social decision, rather than a purely (or even partly) linguistic one. The history's fascinating, but rather involved at best. Probably more likely for Russian, Bulgarian etc..to one day "go Latin", than for Polish, Czech etc.. to "go Cyrillic"LOL

What? Do you say that Poland has used cyrillic in the past?!

They did not stop.Actually Methodius died in Moravia and was the first to give Czechs an alphabet.Later the catholic church tried to reverse all this and put the line in Croatia which for a century was hotspot of the battle between orthodoxy and catholicism.(first missionaries who arrived there were orthodox but Pope reacted fast and sent his own missionaries).

Kyrillos and Methodios were two Greek brothers from Thessaloniki who had love for the slavic nations managed to learn slavic languages and tried to create an alphabet based on byzantine Greek alphabet which could reproduce the phonetic sounds Slavs made as precisely as possible that is why they added a lot of letters unknown to Byzantines.

That's true. Even in non Roman (Latin) countries throughout the world (like Russia), there are so baby signs and billboards using the Roman alphabet because of world languages like English or Spanish. Cyrillic is being overwhelmed.

In 862, both brothers began the work which gives them their historical importance. That year the PrinceRastislav of Great Moravia requested that the Emperor Michael III and the Patriarch Photius send missionaries to evangelize his Slavic subjects. His motives in doing so were probably more political than religious. Rastislav had become king with the support of the Frankish ruler Louis the German, but subsequently sought to assert his independence from the Franks. It is a common misconception that Cyril and Methodius were the first to bring Christianity to Moravia, but the letter from Rastislav to Michael III states clearly that Rastislav's people "had already rejected paganism and adhere to the Christian law."[14]Rastislav is said to have expelled missionaries of the Roman Church and instead turned to Constantinople for ecclesiastical assistance and, presumably, a degree of political support.[14] The Emperor quickly chose to send Cyril, accompanied by his brother Methodius. The request provided a convenient opportunity to expand Byzantine influence. Their first work seems to have been the training of assistants. In 863, they began the task of translating the Bible into the language now known as Old Church Slavonic and travelled to Great Moravia to promote it. They enjoyed considerable success in this endeavour. However, they came into conflict with German ecclesiastics who opposed their efforts to create a specifically Slavic liturgy.For the purpose of this mission, they devised the Glagolitic alphabet, the first alphabet to be used for Slavonic manuscripts. The Glagolitic alphabet was suited to match the specific features of the Slavic language.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saints_Cyril_and_Methodius

the version someone came up in 19th century (the one from the first version of "Powrót Taty" on the website) is way better than the one the author of the page came up (much more intuitive)

Steen's examples are execellent, demonstrating though once again, that Cyrillic does NOT necessarily fit all Slavic languages any more than Latin script does others.

Cyrillic was Poland's first alphabet but Poland made a move to use the latin alphabet as Poland has always looked West. In fact Poland is the furthest eastern country of "Western Europe", it's not "Eastern Europe".

It looks bizarre. :) But it's more natural for a Russian. It gives me an illusion that I got to understand Polish better. :)


The Serbs have found a good way out. If one wants, it will fit even non-Slavic languages.
Further fate of Cyrillic Alphabet will largely depend on how strong and authoritative Russia will be compared to the Western Europe and the US.

I don't think Latin script can easily prevail against cyrillic script in Russia (cyrillic script has its real merits) - imagine all those apostrophed consonants necessary to be used - pretty clumsy methinks - also then if Russians actually face a choice of what Latin transliteration to use this can prove to be difficult - English transcryption is not without its problems (sometimes it's not very precise and can lead to ambiguities) - Polish transcryption is a pretty good one but I guess it would be difficult for Russians to accept Polish digraphs (sz,cz) or anything to write their language that resembles Polish - not to make their writing look Polish Russians will have to choose between Czech-like appearance of the language or something similar to English transcryption - I think Russians would strive to make it as compatible with the English transcryption as possible but it has it pitfalls (letter 'y' to stand for 'y' and 'j' at the same time?)

I've never heard about it but maybe I missed something at school years ago! Could you provide some sources for that? The oldest Polish manuscripts are in Latin (language). How do they know that cyrillic was used in Poland if even Polish language wasn't used widely in writing?

Apparently, a prince of Wiślanie tribe was baptized by Methodius (820 - 885) sometime between 871, when Świętopełk took power, and the death of Methodius in the year 885. The Great Moravian state fell apart after the death of Świętopełk in the year 894, and at the beginning of the tenth century (c. 906) Hungarians eventually destroyed it. No later than that the tribes of Upper Silesia and Vistulans regained their independence. Therefore christianization of these lands lasted only about 20-30 years at the end of the ninth century. The Slavic rite was probably replaced by Latin in the year 885. There are, however, researchers who think that there existed Kraków's diocese at that time.


- The Life of St. Methodius, 885th
ekumenizm.wiara.pl/doc/478263.Poczatki-chrzescijanstwa-w-Polsce-Sto-lat-przed-Mieszkiem

I think Romanian was written in CYrillic back in the 19th century. I, for one, am glad Polish is not. All those acutes, bars, dots and ogonki are so very Polish!

judging by myself I would say aquiring an alphabet different from your native one is not an overwhelming task when you are a kid and I actually am very grateful that I could learn Russian at school - but I guess it can be different in your later years - so if Polish was written in 'cyrilica' and you would not learn Latin script as a kid you would be at some disadvantage when trying to learn foreign languages in your later years

I think the biggest problem to accept would be that it's time-consuming. Szcz=щ. Szczecin=Щецин.

UPD: Just listened to Polish pronunciation on wiki. If transcribe with Cyrillic it will be more like Шчечин.

Shchyuka is no less time consuming than szcziuka, and actually obtaining those carronned letters (those that look Czech) from a keyboard can actually be more difficult for either English or Polish speaking computer user (this is for example why Polish programmers keyboard layout is much more popular than the 'national' layout with signs with diacrytics assigned to 'spare' keys - in the programmers keyboard you use Alt+key to receive an accented variant of a Polish letter)


writing Polish in cyrillic (in the convention presented on the website the OP provided the link to) does not change the pronounciation in the slightest - what you received is just typically Russian pronounciation of Polish words that are written with cyrillic script (in a convention for writing Polish and not Russian) - writing Polish language in cyrillic script, which proves to be not only feasible but also not overly difficult for someone who knows the 'bukwy', does not in the slightest change the pronounciation

Somehow don't think the problem with Polish in Cyrillic has as much to do with the pronunciation of the individual graphemic representations of the Polish phonemes as it does with the actual transcription of the Polish sounds themselves. Certain sounds, as Polonius has noted, have become distinctively "Polish", not merely pan-Slavic, plus, there's always the issue of script as part of national identity looming over the whole discussion:-)

Alas, so much to say, yet comparatively so little space to say itLOL

good points, I tend to look for the Polish translation over the English translation of Russian words Im not 100% sure about (Iknow,I just wasnt writing transliteration twice,inks running low in lap top...)

Cant see Russia dropping it any time soon. Russians I know love the fact its "their" writting and that it baffles westerners, remember most Russians I know still seem a little funny about outsiders learning Russian,sort of check you out a bit.....cold war paranoia much :)

Nonsense. Cyrillic was never used in Poland. Even the oldest relics of Polish writings are using Latin alphabet. Including the famous "Dać ać ja pobruczę a ty poczywaj" from XIII century - the first sentence written in Polish.

Earlier, all documents have been written in Latin, except for the names of towns, and sutch, that were written phonetically. First example so called "Geograf bawarski" from IX century, the list of Polish tribes.

The only time the Cyrillic was seriously considered to become Polish alphabet, it was during partitioning, at 1852. Back then, Russian tzar, Mikołaj I Romanow, planned to force Poles to adopt Cyrillic, in order to further russification of Kingdom of Poland.

No surprise therefore that Mr. Steen in his website chose Pan Tadeusz into Cyrillic to prove his point regarding the possibilities of Polish in non-Latin letters!

I don't really see much of a problem with Polish using the Latin alphabet. Reading and writing in the language is still for the most part very phonetic. At first glance, Polish looks terrifying because for a native English speaker it looks like someone started smashing a computer keyboard. However, reading goes very smoothly once you practice enough times and most of the time you can pronounce a new word correctly.

English on the other hand is a very orthographically chaotic language. If anything, English would benefit more from a new writing system than Polish would.

So, so true EM_ Wave! On the one hand, what with all this talk about a Polish Cyrillization, a German spelling reform, even an Asian 'Westernization' of centuries old ideographs, kanjis etc.., I too think ENGLISH ought to undergo a spelling reform to try at least to iron out it's nightmarish phonemic/graphemic inconsitencies, streamline it's capitalization and make its punctuation more uniform, like French or Spanish have.

On the other hand though, what language doesn't have its daunting complexities, such as Welsh consonant mutations, Icelandic declensional shifts, German inflectional repetition and so forth and so on..... Ought they also ALL change/reform just to fit some ideological grid?

being half russian and having been taught the cyrillic script by my mother, I use it quite often to write polish, especially to my polish cousins living in russia.

I find that the cyrillic script suits Polish perfectly... and makes it look a tad bit more 'exotic'..

Я власне волѩ писать по польску уживаѭц альфабэт цырылицки, бо выглѭда интэрэсуѭцо. :D

the one that Nikolay I has devised was better system than the one you use - if you being Polish know cyryllic alphabet then you catch the Nikolay's Polish cyrillics pretty instantly - and all those tvyordyy znak's at the end of words look cute

my cyrillic is based on present-day russian... excact same spelling rules except they pronounce their soft C's, D's, S's, and Z's quite differently than the polish do. Also, they don't have RZ sound like Polish does. So their word for rzeka would be spelt река, but pronounced like 'rika'. Also, no modern cyrillic alphabets use the Yus symbols any more, considering they no longer contain nasal sounds in their words. Since polish still does, we would have to bring them back from the dead. :D ... the use of ą and ę in cyrillic just doesn't look right.

and the hard signs at the end of words does look nice but it went out of use after 1917...

realistically, modern day Belarussian writing resembles almost exactly what polish would look like written in cyrillic, except for their letter 'ў'....

another thing is that Nikolay I's example is based on old russian cyrillic with the used of letters ць and дзь to resemble ć and dź - which is what Belarusian uses today, as what as Polish in latin... but ć is softened form of T, which dź is softened form of D... so using ть and дь is tecnically more accurate. Czech and slovak used the proper forms of these two in the forms of Ď and «.

Same reason why serbian/croatian use ć and ћ in cyrillic,,, their ћ is just like russian ть.

hence serbian браћa is just like russian братья (pronounced like bratja), and polish bracia.

i'm not good at explaning this stuff.. :P

But, (and that's a BIG BUT...), or should I say "yet", for example Russian vs. Polish 'soft'/'hard' signs are NOT identical in pronunciation, especially those tricky palatalized consonants in Russian!! Neither language's pronunciation is that alike enough to warrant their using the same system of writing. Cyrillic has grown so far apart, so to speak, from Latin letters, that the two would appear unreconcilable.

"BratJa" and "braCia" aren't the same sound; even my non-Slavic ears and tongue can pick that up. And so Russian and Polish need slightly different ways of expression such differences.