History of Polish orthography

History of Polish orthography describes the various forms that written Polish has taken since people first began writing the Polish language through to the modern day.

Old Polish (before 1500) Poles began writing in Polish in the 12th century using the Latin alphabet. This alphabet, however, was ill-equipped to deal with Polish phonology, particularly the palatal consonants (now written as ś, ź, ć, dź), the retroflex group (now sz, ż, and cz) as well as the nasal vowels (now written as ą, ę). Consequently, Polish spelling in the Middle Ages was highly inconsistent as writers struggled to adapt the Latin alphabet to the needs of the Polish language. There was no unified system; different writers came up with different systems before the modern Polish orthography was firmly established. In the earliest documents the letter c could signify c, cz, or k while the letter z was used for ś, z, ź, and ż. Writers soon began to experiment with digraphs (combinations of letters), new letters (ꟁ and ſ), and eventually diacritics.

1440 Reform Jakub Parkoszowic (Jacobus Parcossii) in 1440 was the first to attempt to introduce an orthographic reform titled Traktat o ortografii polskiej (Treatise on Polish Orthography) that was ultimately failed and was not rediscovered until 1830. In it he suggests the use of doubling vowels to represent vowel length, a feature of Old and Middle Polish. He also suggests the use of ꟁ for nasal vowels and ÿ for the phoneme /ɨ/, as well as a number of digraphs and trigraphs.

Middle Polish (1500–1750) Several grammarians attempted to introduce orthographic standards in the Middle Polish period, with varying success.

Stanisław Zaborowski's Orthography of 1514–1515 Around 1514, Stanisław Zaborowski wrote Orthographia seu modus recte scribendi et legendi Polonicum idioma quam utilissimus ("Orthography, that is the most useful way of correct writing and reading in the Polish language"). In it, he attempts to fill the gaps left by the writing system used by Latin by including digraphs and diacritics.

Łacinnicy naznaczają liter różniących się między sobą nazwiskiem i postacią 23. Nam Polakom nie potrzeba ich więcey: albowiem i nasz ięzyk niemi obeyjść się może: chociaż co do brzmienia iedna i ta sama litera z innemi połączona (consyllabica) rozmaicie się wymawia: co się i u Łacinków zdarza. Latin speakers distinguish 23 letters differing from each other by name and shape. We Poles do not need more: because our language can get by without them: however, as to the sound, one and the same letter when combined with others (consyllabica) is pronounced in various ways: which also happens to Latin speakers.

He expresses disdain for the usage of g for the sound /j/, particularly in native words.

Aby się nie więc mieszały polskie wyrazy, niech się w nich kładzie i, ieśliby brzmiało, a nie g, iakoto: moiá, twoiá, moi, twoi, i t. d. And so in order to not confuse Polish terms, let i be written in them, if it sounds thus, and not g, for example moiá, twoiá, moi, twoi, etc.

His decisions were informed by Parkoszowic's attempted reform as well as Czech.

>R. w polskim ięzyku dwoiakie ma brzmienie: iedno łacińskim i polskim wyrazom spólne, drugie niewłaściwé, które pospolicie pisać zwykli tak: rz. Czesi zaś takie r sposobem przyciskowych czyli niewłaściwych liter, kropkę u góry kładąc, znaczyć zwykli tak ṙ (z kropką) co iest daleko iednostayniéy. R in the Polish language has two sounds: one is common to both Latin and Polish, the other is improper, which is commonly written thus: rz. The Czechs however write this r in a way of accented, that is, improper letters, placing a dot on top, to mark it usually as thus ṙ (with a dot) which is unchanging.

He proposed the following letters: a, á, ạ, ą, b, b̈, c, c̈, ċ, d, ď, d̈, ḋ, e, ē, f, g, g̈, h, i, ī, k, k̈, l, ł, m, m̈, n, n̈, o, ō, p, p̈, r, ṙ, s, s̈, ṡ, t, u, v, v̈, w, ẅ, x, ẍ, ẋ, y, z, z̈, ż.

The orthography was not used in many works, however it influenced works such as Raj duszny printed around 1513 and Początek święte Ewanielije podług świętego Jana around 1518/1519.

Seklucjan's grammar of 1549 In 1549 Jan Seklucjan (Joannis Seclvcianus) wrote Krótka a prosta nauka czytania i pisania języka polskiego ("A short and simple study of reading and writing in the Polish language"), in which he laments the difficulty of reading Polish.

Pismo polskie jest trudne ku czytaniu tym ktorzy włosności buchstabow przekreszonych albo pąktowany nie rozumieją. Polish writing is difficult to read for those who don't understand letters either marked with diacritics or dots.

In this book, he introduced 11 vowel letters, a, â, ą, e, ę, i, o, u, ü, w, y. At this time, the phonemes /i/ and /ɨ/ were still not often distinguished, and in the work itself one can find examples such as "gdi" (modern gdy).

Murzynowski's reform of 1551

In response to Seklucjan's grammar, Stanisław Murzynowski wrote Ortografija polská. To jest nauka pisániá i czytaniá języka polskié(go), ilé Polákowi potrzebá, niewielem słów dostatecznie wypisaná (Polish orthography, that is learning to read and write the Polish language, as much as Poles need, written in sufficient but few words) in 1551. In it, Murzynowski introduced 51 graphemes. Most notably, the long vowels were distinguished with an acute accent, the so-called slanted (pochylone) vowels (á, é, ó), palatalized consonants were distinguished using a diacritic b̍, p̍, and v̍, modern bi, pi, and wi, the character ċ was also introduced to represent /t͡ɕ/ (modern ć), which caused some controversy, as the letter was already used mostly in the digraph ċz (modern cz). A special letter ɀ was suggested for the sound /ʑ/, and along with it the digraph dɀ for /d͡ʑ/ (modern dź and dzi). The letter s̈ for the sound /ɕ/. The ligature ß and the digraphs ſſ and ſs (modern sz) were suggested for /ʂ/. Murzynowski also suggested that the letter x be used to represent the sounds /ks/ and /kɕ/ in loanwords. Before, the sounds /i/ and /j/ were often written using only the grapheme i, as in Latin; however, they were at times distinguished, namely in the Polish translation of the New Testament using the letters i and y respectively. Murzynowski was the first to suggest the two sounds be systematically distinguished and introduced the letter j, and the usage of g to represent /j/ dropped. He also suggested the use of yj for the sound /ɨj/, as is the case in modern Polish, as it was previously unwritten.

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