Old Polish language

Old Polish
ięzyk Polſki
Pronunciation [ˈjɛ̃zɨk ˈpɔlskʲi]
Region Central Europe
Era developed into Middle Polish by the 16th century
Language codes
ISO 639-3 –
Linguist list
 0gi
Glottolog None

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.

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"), ańjoł ("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.

Alphabet

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)

See also

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