Polish language would look better written in Cyrillic Script?

Paweł, German and English are less than convincing analogies here, as neither belongs to a language family which has ever used ANY extant alphabet but the Latin (that is, if one momentarily excludes Gothic script!). Polish on the other hand belongs to a language group many of whose representatives do use a non-Latin alphabet, principally Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian etc... In fact, Polish originally was slated too for Cyrillic, but it was then decided that in order to Christianize the Poles more successfully, the Latin alphabet was the more appropriate choice! The reasons therefore were entirely socio-cultural, NOT linguistic, e.g. would Polish phonemes somehow fit "better" into a Latin or Cyrillic alphabet or notLOL

Rozumiesz moje zdanie?

so what? And England and Germany belongs to the continent (Europe) where cyrillic is used by countries like Russia and Ukraine....so should they change alphabet?

I don't know how do you people draw such a crazy conclusions

Poles never used Cyrillic alphabet and many of the people here tried to explain this. As we can see you didn't get it.


English belongs to a Germanic language group. So I think we should write ß instead of ss, e.g. streß instead of srtess :)


Wow!!!! Who did it ???? Another nonsense. There was a committee which slated this lol

.....and you can't speak English that great there, Wulkan!

Lepiej mówię po polsku a także czytam literaturę od Iwaszkiewicza, Orzeszkowej, Tuwima i Mrożka itd. Czy znasz naszą literaturę???
Prawdopodobnie, NIE!!

To Paweł, as a linguist, one studies the origins and development of language. English developed OUT of German. Polish developed independently from Russian etc.. out of "Common Slavic".

You clearly misunderstood my argument!

Polish already has several unique characters in its alphabet which along with other consonant clustering make it instantly recognizable as being Polish. It is beautiful as it is and this would be lost if Cyrillic was used instead.

But no worry, there would never ever be any public support to change it.

Technically, this sentence is perfectly correct! Even if a native speaker preferred to choose a slightly different version here, one cannot challange anyone on this sentence.



Either the last one or: całkowicie się zgadzam.


Both the Polish and the Czech people were very close to starting writing down their languages in Cyrilic. The two giants of Christianisation of the Slavic people, the Greek people Cyril and Methodius, knew the Slavic language (as used around Thessaloniki in Greece at that time) and were sent with their first mission to Moravia, today part of the Czech Republic.

Rastislav, prince of Great Moravia, 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. 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. Its descendant script, the Cyrillic, is still used by many languages today.

But this is an important point! In 1912, a hundred years ago, all written german looked like that:

Ironically it was the Nazis that promoted Latin letters during WWII because they ridiculously found the "gebrochene Schrift" Jewish by origin. Nevertheless I think it was to the advantage that German speakers adopted the Latin Antiqua letters that most of the other European languages have, too. Admittedly Gothic or Fraktur letters are much closer to the Latin alphabet - actually it's just a side alphabet of Antiqua - than cyrillic letters are to Latin.

It' a nice pastime to look what Polish would look like written in Cyrillic letters. Even German would fit perfectly into the Cyrillic alphabet. Just a few extra letters needed to be found and everything would work well.

But which government would spend billions of Euros or Zlotys to change the alphabet? It would also deprive future generations from their past. Modern Turks need to learn the Arab script first - which takes a couple of months to be fluent - until they are able to read Turkish texts written before 1924.

English never had another alphabet than the Latin. The reasons for instance that Russian 'Cyrillified' and Polish didn't have to do more with religious/cultural politics than language politics.

Actually old Anglo Saxons used the "Futhork" or Runic Alphabet before they got christianized in the 8th century, like all other Germanic tribes also did.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dalrunor.svg
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runes

Surely before the got baptized all West Germanic people didn't have much to write, therefore the old runic alphabet did not make much impact of the culture of present nations that speak a Germanic language.

The Latin based Antiqua script for me is the joining element of the Occident or Western World and I am happy to use it.

Imagine what huge problems we all had if every nation had its own script. I once got lost in a big city in Northern Thailand,nobody spoke English there and I wasn't even able to write down the name of my place to stay because I couldn't decipher Thai letters and they couldn't read Latin script.

No, it would look stupid.

It would. But the only reason for that is that we are not used to Polish in Cyrillic script. The same would apply to Bulgarians or Russians; they're not used to Latin script, so it will look stupid for them.

But if we one day decided to start teaching all our children the Polish language in Cyrillic script, Polish in Cyrillic would not look stupid for them once they grow up.

This happened to the Belorussians who once (in the times of the Grand Duchy) used Latin script for their language, then changed to Cyrillic script under the pressure of Russia who put her hands over almost the entire Grand Duchy after 1795 (anyway, these days Lukaszenko wants to srape off the Belorussian language altogether and replace it with Russian).

Yes, it was called "£acinka"
/wiki/Belarusian_Latin_alphabet


But it's already done:


/wiki/Languages_of_Belarus


I once read a scientific report on the use of Belarusian and was surprised to discover how few dailies and magazines in Minsk are published in Belarusian. Most of them are in Russian.

Funky Samoan,

"Furthark" or "Runes" are indeed the precursors of later German(-ic) writing, i.e. "Latin" alphabet. Yet why Paweł's analogy between Polish, Slovene etc.. using non-Cyrillic vs. Russian using Cyrillic misses the mark, is precisely because OTHER extant Slavic languages have always been using Cyrillic as a perfectly viable means of writing. This was never the case with either English, German, Swedish, Dutch etc.. or any extant Germanic language, all of which (certainly in modern times, e.g. since around 1200AD) have been using those recognizable Latin letters as their "alphabet". Any text examined from the Furthark period onward, will reveal that the latter was clearly given up after a certain period of time. Russian, Serbian, and the rest continue to use Cyrillic as they have since time immemorial!

Whilst on the subject of Western/European writing systems though, excluding Turkish (which used the Arab script until Ataturk!!), Albanian, as I recall, used the Galogothic (??) script until the late Middle Ages. There are also some other separate examples which I presently cannot recall-:))

Grubas, "opanować" would have been my other choice, but I made an honest error, undoubtedly a language transference glitch from the German "eine Sprache BEHERRSCHEN". Sound familiar?LOL

In your English, as I reminded Wulkan, try to limit your use of conventional slang. It'd be in the reverse as if I were trying to impress you with my Polish by writing "poszłem" for "poszedłem" or "Rusz dupe!" rather than "Przepraszam!" etc.. It's never 'cool' to be rude (....even in English)

Oh, yes. I should add that while Icelandic, not to mention the other four Scandinavian languages (except of course for Finnish, but INCLUDING Faeroese!) has several "extra" letters, such as the thorn(s), ligatures, plus the Swedish umlauts, .., it still uses the same alphabet as we do and has done so for almost a thousand years:-)

Why can't you just accept the fact that non of the west slavic languages have ever used cyrillic alphabet cause we have nothing to do with that and we really don't care that Eastern Europe uses it, if they like it, so be it...

Exactly. It is like asking why English doesn't use German letters or French diacritics. This is a pointless thread.

A pointless thread, but one with an agenda, no doubt. I'm sure the "guest" OP is actually one of those Serbs/Serb apologists who dominate (read: ruin) this forum from time to time.

The question is as pointless as asking "Simplified Chinese looks better, so why do Hong Kong Chinese use traditional characters?".

Why do you think that Simplified Chinese looks better? In my view, traditional Chinese characters look better.

I also think that traditional Chinese looks better...

Polish in Cyrillic script looks so cool and earthly. I like it!

It is just that Western Slavic's phonology developed independently from Eastern Slavic when the Slavic languages began to diverge originally. Certain sounds in Polish are clearly NOT represented (or representable!) in Cyrillic, that's really all, more or less comparable to certain Cyrillic letters cannot be represented in non-Cyrillic, i.e. the Latin, alphabet. The latter's the reason why 'purist' Russian teachers, such as mine, insisted up and down from day one, that we learn the Cyrillic alphabet with the very first lesson, and not latinize, despite the fact that it appears "easier" in the beginning. I suppose it's the same argument as to whether ant foreign language should be taught in the target as opposed to the learner's NATIVE language; the purists say yes, the non-purists say no:-)

No, it would look better in Glagolithic, The first Slavic alphabet and in fact at one point used by the east,west and south Slavs. Saints Cyril did not invent and spread Cyrillic, it was Glagolithic. Cyrillic came latter on, actually I believe if Cyrillic was not invented all the Slavs would being using Glagolthic by now and I personally prefer the look of Glagolithic over Cyrillic.

Indeed. The current alphabet suits fairly well - certainly more than Cyrillic or any revived and obscure alphabets like the Southern Slavonic Glagolitic alphabet


There's way too much political and historical baggage due to Russian imperialism for that ever to happen. The Russians did try it without success - people in Poland prefer their modified version of the Latin alphabet.

that's truth


Most European countries use modified versions of Latin alphabet.

Latin has too much influence globally, Its very odd that Turkey also uses Latin script too. I think Latin has become generic

Both alphabets look interesting, for me the fascination with Cyrillic script is due to it being different to what we, in Poland, are accustomed too and yet being so familiar because it is used to express some of the Slavic tongues. Would Polish look better written as Cyrillic? Perhaps, but a lot has changed within the Cyrillic alphabet and some sounds are not expressed anymore, these would have to be recreated or even new ones created to accommodate for Polish sounds. Polish is actually one of the most if not the most archaic of Slavic languages as it has retained more sounds than other Slavic languages and so it would be difficult transforming its written form.

Which sounds do you have on your mind? I'm just curious if what I know is correct.

I think he means that a number of Polish nasals have been retained, whereas they are absent from the other extant Slavic languages! Same with long (closed) vs.short (open) vowels, conversely absent from Polish, yet present in Slovene, Czech and one or more other languages:-)

Cyrillic was doubtless abandoned by Polish as it's language eventually found itself unable to equate certain letters with certain corresponding sounds.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_alphabets#Polish_.28Constructed.29
Clearly some (900 on Facebook) people or more develop transliterators, and various systems for writing Polish with cyrillic.

.....all of which doubtless defeats the original purpose of have having Polish adopt Latin script:-) Presumably, were Polish meant to have retained it's primal script, it would have done so LONG AGO!

My language skills consist almost entirely of English and conversational Ukrainian. I am certainly no expert of the Polish language. However, having been pressed to communicate, I was able to employ my Ukrainian language skills quite effectively during a recent visit to Krakow. I was surprised how well I understood the local population.

It is my thought that while Ukrainian and Polish have many similarities in Eastern Poland, perhaps I would not be quite as successful in Western Poland. Furthermore, the "Latin" of the Slavic languages originated in "Ruthenia", now part of Ukraine, just west of the Karpati Mountains. Logically, as Ruthenian disseminated, it was melded into local languages. Hence, some blanket similarities exist throughout the slavic world, with local variations. For example, the word "strashno" meaning "horrible" is near universal. That pretty much defines the torturous regional history.

The farther one travels from "Ruthenia" the more variation I suggest can be expected. Russian only shares about a 40% crossover with Ukrainian . What would be communicated if we only understood 40% of any conversation? Russian has other influences such as Finnish and Turkik.