Another anachronism is not realizing how daunting these distances were at that time. It's 300 miles from Ostrava to Gniezno. And there were essentially no roads, just tracks. And often not even that, so that one had to travel through thick forest and swamps. And forget about bridges. And you had to pitch camp every night as settlements were few and far between. On foot, fit males traveling very light could cover this distance in three to four weeks under the best of circumstances. A lot longer when transporting goods. Even on horse, an unencumbered messenger would need about a week. Poland at that time wasn't anything like France or England where the Romans left good road systems behind. If the weather was bad. you could double or triple those times.
you need boats for rivers - how do you carry a boat when you travel from one river basin to another - Moravia is neither in Odra nor Vistula basin you know - and guess what travel from say Wrocław to Gniezno would last equally long on horse as using rivers - this is geography for you
My native language uses only Cyrillic script. The way we have to transliterate our names for example sucks. In my opinion the English transliteration creates problems. I hate sh and ch for ш and ч. I also think the Czec/Slovak ones with caron look too clumsy (š and č). And zh for ж? So we have Zhana (Жана) yet Georgeta (Жоржета) or even Jorj for Жорж! Polish has the very pleasant-looking ż and ź. Add a caron and it looks too much: ž
I also much prefer transliteration of cyrillic в into w and not v. Piwo > pivo. Just think Slavic words with V look bad. But our authorities want us to transliterate Иван Димитров as Ivan Dimitrov and not Iwan Dimitrow. I know English speakers would have trouble pronouncing it but enough having to do all for them!
And please Poles, God forbid you go the Czechoslovak way and adopt V and ž, č, š etc Stick to your current orthography, I love it despite looking overehelming at first. It makes you stand out and unique while others copy the Czech way or the Bulgarian/Russian way. ;)
And ż is a great letter, the one who came with it was a genious. Ź is also not bad. Both of them look better than Ž. Maybe ą and ę are the only ones looking a bit hard to reproduce for commercial sogns, some replacements suggested: å (can't find a with dot), æ, ā, ė, ē, ø
kobietą can become - kobietå - kobietø, kobietā Walęsa could be Walėsa or Walēsa or even Walæsa if there is a switch of pronunciation at one time and nasal ę evolves into an æ
An a or an ė with dot instead of ą and ę would make ż have some company and not be the odd one with a dot :)
Cyrillic was designed for Slavic languages, that's the whole point of it's existence. So it is only logical that all Slavic languages are to be written in it.
Cyrillic have inheritance in Vinca letters. Vinca is Danube valley civilization script and its oldest writing in Europe and world. Its direct link with pre-historic Sarmatians (ie Proto-Slavs).
Form of Cyrillic letters actually existed before Cirilus and Metodius categorized those letters in Cyrillic scrip. So, I will suggest Cyrillic to adopt new name, more Slavic.
However, the adaptation of
Let us be honest here. All Slavs, Poles included, adopted Christianity in order to avoid to be massacred.
BDW, Slavic (ie Sarmatian) society is original Western society. So, essentially, West is subjugated to non-West that is western Europe.
Yes, though NOT all Eastern Europeans, for instance the Albanians, some of whom became Christians, while others Muslims. Think too of the Bosnians, Bulgarians and the Serbs. All three received forced conversion, yet a huge number remain Muslims to this day! The latter also do not uniformly adhere to the dictum of Cyrillic Script.
Even if Polish needs some reform (though I don't insist on it) then it would be pronunciation rather than the script. I find it (and not only me) rather difficult and unpleasant. To the extent that I would prefer to use English to communicate to Poles rather than Polish (even if I would knew it well). What makes me wonder about Slavic languages in general is how languages which are so similar lexically are so much different in pronunciation.
Using English to communicate with Poles (on average) in my experience would be rather like using a drill for a job where a jigsaw would do even better:-)
Eventually, the wood can be pierced, but why all the extra added effort?
Russian pronunciation continues to dog me and my inability to pronounce even basic words/names such as the "soft" d-sound in 'dver' or the t-sound in my tutor's first name 'Katja", remains a constant source of frustration.
On the other hand, Polish pronunciation I picked up a like a fish to water. Still can't say why...and I'm the linguist who should be able to distinguish a struant from a plosive from a labial and a bilabial:-)
I find it (and not only me) rather difficult and unpleasant
Start pronouncing vowels in Russian correctly and maybe we'll talk, it's voda not vada Moskva not Maskva! Maybe change the spelling to nichevo and sivodnja while you're at it. Russian could sound much nicer with fuller, rather than slurred, vowels.
My teacher made me say the Russian word "D - Y - A - D - Y - A" (uncle) almost fifty times until I got the full palatalization. Thought I'd practically swallow my tongueLOL
Start pronouncing vowels in Russian correctly and maybe we'll talk, it's voda not vada Moskva not Maskva!
I guess a hundreds of years ago they were pronounced more like in Polish what is still evident in Russian spelling and some Russian dialects. But I afraid Russian pronunciation evolved in right direction because in my feeling it is difficult to pronounce straining "o-o-h" in a words if this sound is not under stress. Therefore it evolved in what is called an "undefined stressed vowel".
One reason why Russians in particular have such problems with the stressed vowels of English, Spanish, and Italian, what with their final "o-sounds", making them sound almost like "schwas", e.g. M - O - D - E - S - T - O will typically come out sounding like " M - U - H - D - E - S - T - U - H" etc.
One reason why Russians in particular have such problems with the stressed vowels of English, Spanish, and Italian
I'm not sure about English. Take a note how "o" is pronounced in some English words when it is not under stress. For example, "o" in "voluptuous". It seems not like Polish "o". So, English does have this reduction of stressed vowels as well, it seems.
Maybe this is a question of a habit, but in my feeling reduced unstressed vowels sound nicer. Non-reduced sound a but rude and peasant-style pronunciation.
Call in Cyrillic or `Old Slavic`, doesn`t matter. Here is crucial that with Cyrilics Slavs can better protect their unique culture, values and tradition. Cyrillic is only Slavic thing.
I hope we Serbs give up from Latin alphabet that we now using parallel with Cyrillic.
Oh, English too has many examples of unstressed vowels. Check out Southern US dialects in which "potato" is often prounounced " P - U - H - T - A - T - U- H", same with "tomato" etc.
No, Poles just need to digitize and use Polish-appropriate fonts (the ones they used in movie credits, books and newspaper in the 30s to 80s). Those modern PC fonts make Polish harder to read than was the case in the past with TV/printed press. Most fonts like Arial and Times weren't developed with Polish-specific in mind while in the 1930s to 1980s they used to modify scripts more appropriately.
I read old PRL era books and the credits of 80s Reksio cartoon no problem. Online I get a mind block with PL characters looking hard to read.
As with many languages pre-digitization, much older printing tended to reflect a deep and abiding respect above all for the written over the spoken word! In English, just take a look at typical fonts from the early '7O's, certainly way prior such as the '3O's, not to mention the 19th century.
I think it would look more interesting, as transliteration is probably the most fun part of it. But I doubt my fellow Polish people would like to bear a stigma of being "Eastern".
@Lyzko That's true, Lyzko, but it's more evident in Polish as it uses many special characters like a and e with ogonek (tail) and digraphs. I could easily assimilate things like a-ogonek, e-ogonek, cz, rz, sz, szcz etc. in the old printed/TV format. On a computer or mobile phone I get a total mind block and just skip over the words as everything looks kinda fussy. I wonder if that makes learning Polish by foreigners today more difficult than it was in the past. Headings and large sizes are ok, but at 9 to 13 pt sizes it's harder to read than in print.
