Pronunciation [ˈjɛ̃zɨk ˈpɔlskʲi] Linguist list 0gi | Region Central Europe Glottolog None | |
Era developed into Middle Polish by the 16th century Language family Indo-European
Balto-Slavic
Slavic
West Slavic
Lechitic
Old Polish | ||
Old Polish (Polish: język staropolski) is the period in the history of the Polish language between the 9th and the 16th centuries, followed by the Middle Polish language.
Contents
History
The Polish language started to change after the baptism of Poland, bringing in words from Latin such as kościół ("church", from L. castellum, meaning "castle"), anioł ("angel", from L. angelus), often via the Czech language, which also influenced Polish in that era (hence Lechitic "wiesiełyj" yielded modern Polish "wesoły" and "wesele"). Also, in later centuries, with the onset of cities founded on German law (namely, the so-called Magdeburg law), Middle High German urban and legal words filtered into Old Polish. Around the 14th or 15th centuries the aorist and imperfect became obsolete. In the 15th century the dual fell into disuse except for a few fixed expressions (adages, sayings). In relation to most other European languages, though, the differences between Old and Modern Polish are comparatively slight; the Polish language is somewhat conservative relative to other Slavic languages.
Spelling
The difficulty the medieval scribes had to face was attempting to codify the language was the inadequacy of the Latin alphabet to some sounds of the Polish language, for example cz, sz. Thus, Old Polish does not have a standard spelling. One letter could give several sounds - e.g. s can be read as s, sz or ś. Writing words was almost entirely consistent with the spelling of Latin, for example. Bichek - Byczek, Gneuos - Gniewosz etc. The oldest known, according to an old Polish is the opinion of Day, ut ia pobrusa, a ti poziwai (originally: Daj, uć ja pobrusza, a ti pocziwaj, Modern Polish: Pozwól, że ja będę mełł, a ty odpocznij, English, Come, let me hold up, and you rest), written around 1270 in the Book of Henryków.
Parkoszowic
About 1440 Jakub Parkoszowic, a professor of Jagiellonian University, tried to codify the Polish alphabet. He wrote the first tract on Polish orthographic rules (in Latin) and rhyme Obiecado (in Polish). The reform consisted in the introduction of round and unrounded letters on the distinction between hard and soft consonants. It also contained merging double vowels to a long vowel, for example: aa - /aː/. Parkoszowic's proposal has not been adopted, and his theoretical concepts had no followers.
Phonetics
Over the centuries Old Polish pronunciation was subjected to numerous modifications. These are only the most basic ones.
The consonant system transferred into the soft coronal consonants, for example d', t', z', s' for d͡ʑ, ć, ź, ś. Many consonant clusters were simplified; which in the process made assimilation reverse many consonants in words, before that following a voiceless consonant.
Literature
Example
Ach, Królu wieliki nasz Coż Ci dzieją Maszyjasz, Przydaj rozumu k'mej rzeczy, Me sierce bostwem obleczy, Raczy mię mych grzechów pozbawić Bych mógł o Twych świętych prawić.(The introduction to The Legend of Saint Alexius (15th century)