Polish language would look better written in Cyrillic Script?

I was in school at the time of the "Polish Millennium" and I was taught that the King of Poland at the time (Mieszko?) made a conscious effort for Poland to use the Latin alphabet and follow the Roman Catholic Church. He did this for political and social reasons. He wanted Poland to become Westernized. I thought that the previous alphabet was Cyrillic as that what accounts for the apostrophe's over the Polish letters and I thought I read something as much over the internet but I can't find it, so I might be wrong (can it be?).

No - it couldn't have been. The Cyrillic script has only been developed after X century (and made popular even later, something like XII century). Before Cyrillian script was developed, Cyril and Methodius developed Glagolitic script - which was based on Greek script (although some of the characters are taken from Oriental scripts: Hebrew, Samaritan and Coptic)

Interesting link: ancientscripts.com/glagolitic.html
Texts in Glagolitic are apparently the oldest written Slavic texts.
Glagolitic probably wouldn't have even been introduced on the territory of Poland (due to being formally developed only in IX century) as Poland took Christianity from Rome (with the Latin script) in X century and the oldest scripts found are Latin.

I couldn't find much about scripts prior to Glagolitic and pre-Latin - were we illiterate back then?
Or, rather than that - based on the fact that Poland was on the "Amber Route" - we were likely to use combination of Latin and Greek characters (as most of the amber traffic came from those directions)?

Alleged inscriptions on worship monuments seems to deny it. However there are none who survived to our times (or I don't know about them). It's just some "foreign" written sources of early centures mention that they existed.


There is some theory that before glagolit there was existing a Slavic alphabet but it's a very doubtious and mysterious presumption.

As was correctly pointed out before, it wasn't until the mid-19th century when there was even serious talk of Poland "adopting" Cyrillic, really a move to unite with Czarist Russia. The so-called 'Polish kingdoms' included much of present day Russia and Lithuania, only the latter of which didn't use Cyrillic during the 19th century:-)

Certainly not, which is why I said English WOULD benefit more from a change and not that it should.

With which again I wholeheatedly concur:-))))

As a foreign language instructor of more years than I'd care to recount, English is typically the language which gives learners the most headaches, NOT German!

maybe it doesn't look right to you but it looks perfectly right for me - and those yuses are hardly inteligible (almost like chinese ideograms - would need half a year of constant exposure to memorise which is which and there are four of them) - so for me the ogoneks attached to Russian letters make much more sense (and are almost instantly intelligible)

Gumishu's right. It's all a matter of adaptability, akin to an Asian weaned on their traditional ideographs becoming slowly accustomed to letters.

- it is not more technically accurate because the ć and t' sounds are very different - even the Belarusian c' which is still different from Polish (and is sort of intermediate sound between t' and Polish ć) is different enough for them not to be written as t' (it is simply soft 'c' not soft 't')

btw the Russian language can almost perfectly be rendered with Polish ortography (with the adoption of a couple of apostrophed signs for soft consonants) - so why don't Russians adopt writing their language with Polish ortography


because they have appriopriate sounds of soft d and soft t which are not present in Polish - conversly Czechs don't have dz, dź, and ć

A bit off topic, but is it the same for Ukrainian?

Interesting that Russian fits Polish ortography so well though - I wouldn't have thought so, but that's with me not knowing any Russian at all.

I am not sure delphi - I am not familiar enough with Ukrainian - my guess is it's very similar situation as with Russian (maybe save for some minor discrepancies)

Maybe it would look nice but oh the extra stress of learning it!!!!!

it's not saying that it would be read in a Polish manner - you've got a lot of shwa sounds in Russian that are unaccented vowels - but that is not shown even in Russian ortography - - and as I mentioned Russian has a whole series of palatalized consonants that are not present in Polish - but this is quite easily solved by adding appostrophes to respective consonants (this is an age old solution and widely accepted actually)

Ukrainian, as far as I've observed, has certain 'soft' signs not present in either Russian or Polish, PLUS the tendency to use an 'h-sound' for Polish and Russian 'g' obstruents, making Ukrainian somewhat closer phonologically to Czech:

Polish: główny Czech: hlovny Ukrainian: holowny
Polish: gołąb Czech: holub
etc...

Apropos 'schwa-sounds', it is precisely the absence of such sounds in Russian which makes it easier to pronounce for most Americans, conversely, American English easier for Russians to mimic than for Poles or Czechs.

no problem with h sound - there are two ways of writing 'h' sound in Polish 'h' and 'ch' which is a reminiscence of the presence of the voiced 'h' in former time in Polish - though the 'h' sound was only in borrowed words ( of which many were Ukrainian and Czech) - so no problem with writing Ukrainian 'h' with Polish ortography


it's hlavni - Czech reflects the older pronounciation (Common Slavic) - many of 'a' turned into 'o's in Polish - the process went further in some Polish dialects in southern Poland (like Silesian) - the original ProtoSlavic word for head was 'galva' (very similar to Lithuanian IIRC)

Ooops, I meant that it is precisely the PRESENCE of such sounds....otherwise the post would've made zero senseLOL
He-he!

Gee thanks, gumi. Guess I overestimated myself (..once more). I always learn something new here or review something old I'd forgotten.
=>

- I haven't so far heard any Anglophone who mastered the soft sounds of Russian - bieriecz' turns into berech (dosn't sound Russian at all)

Well, there was a well-known Russian-American broadcaster named Vladimir Posner, born in the Motherland, sounded like the proverbial Brooklyn cabdriver when he spoke. The drawling whine of the N'yawkkkkuh, the loss of final 'ing's' etc... Just like in Russian.

Well, there was a well-known Russian-American broadcaster named Vladimir Posner, born in the Motherland, sounded like the proverbial Brooklyn cabdriver when he spoke. The drawling whine of the N'yawkkkkuh, the loss of final 'ing's' etc... Just like in Russian.

Typical Russian accent in English among Moscow youth: "Yeeeuh, I wazzz livin' inn Muhdestuh befaww I gonna go tuh...." compared with Polish:
"Aj voss leevink in Mawdestaw, baht aj..."

a good try - Muhdestuh for Modesto: very Russian sounding :) but Poles don't say 'I voss' but rather 'I woss' ('I voss' is a German specialty)

No it wouldn't

Sorry there, Gumishu, but "your" 'w's' pronounced oftern when you guys speak English, sound a heck of a lot like our 'v's'!

A Pole, for that matter ANYBODY, with an above average ear, can of course pronounce 'was', like 'W - A - S' (uuuzz). This though is exceedinlgy rare, unless the person just happens to be gifted.

I claim no such gifts, incidentally)))

Polish would look better written in Cyrillic Script?

No, It wouldn't. Would German, English or maybe French look better in cyrillic? I don't think so

neither of these is a Slavic language.

Poland has been using latin alphabet for long centuries and never used cyrillic so it has nothing to do with our culture. Polish is a western slavic language first of all.

....and yet nonetheless, a linguistic descendant of Rurik the Slav. It's a fact though, that Roman Catholicism did much to "Westernize" Polish, certainly more than Greek Orthodoxy did for Russian etc..

I know I just pointed out that it's wrong to draw linguistic parallels between Slavic and Roman languages.


That doesn't theoretically restrict using a non-Latin alphabet, does it?


save for that Rurik wasn't actually a Slav. :)

Ah yes, he was actually a Swede (in disguise!):-))
LOL

But please explain me for what reason polish should (would) use cyrillic alphabet? German and English neither are roman languages. So, should they use cyrillic alphabet? That's nonsense for me, sorry. And what does it mean, that Polish would look better written in Cyrillic? For me, as a Pole, Polish looks the best in our spelling system, which we have from ages. In general, the topic is like a nonsense.

Agreed. So why did you bump it when it had been dormant since January?

Because the topic is still readable, isn't it? I'd like to everyone know what I think about it as a Polish native speaker :)