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Polish the Standardization of Polish Orthography in the 16Th Century Polish The standardization of Polish orthography in the 16th century Daniel Bunčić 0. Introduction The history of Polish spelling is quite well-documented; this holds espe- cially true for the 16th century, which is generally regarded as a watershed in the development not only of Polish orthography but also of the Polish language as a whole: in all relevant Polish language histories of the last fifty years (Klemensiewicz, Lehr-Spławiński, and Urbańczyk 1964, Ro- spond 1973, Klemensiewicz 1974, Kuraszkiewicz 1972 and 1981, Mazur 1993, Długosz-Kurczabowa and Dubisz 1998: 54–56, Walczak 1999), the beginning of the 16th century marks the transition from the Old Polish pe- riod (doba staropolska) to the Middle Polish period (doba średniopolska, until the middle or the end of the 18th century) and the inception of the Polish “literary” (i.e. standard) language (język literacki).1 Apart from such language histories, the source texts relevant to the his- tory of Polish spelling are also readily available. There are several antholo- gies of 16th-century texts in their original spelling (e.g., Taszycki 1955 [texts from 1520 to 1760], Borawski and Furdal 1980 [1136–1974], Wydra and Rzepka 1984 [1136–1543]), the five orthographic treatises which ap- peared during the 16th century have all been reprinted in a handy volume with an informative foreword (Urbańczyk 1983), and the enormously valu- able Słownik polszczyzny XVI wieku [Dictionary of 16th-century Polish] (1966–) includes exhaustive data about spelling variants (e.g., the fre- quency of each variant in the corpus and even data about individual texts). There is also a monograph on the history of Polish orthography, which dedicates a separate chapter to the 16th century (Jodłowski 1979: 29–40). Therefore the main lines of development of Polish orthography have been so well-established in Polish linguistics that the present article can do little more than extract these main lines from the existing literature, test them DOI 10.1515/9783110288179.219, ©2017 Daniel Bunčić, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs3.0 License. 220 Daniel Bunčić against the extant empirical data, make them understandable for non-Slavi- cists and occasionally offer a new interpretation of a minor phenomenon relevant to the present volume. 1. Patterns of spelling variation around 1500 1.1. Prehistory: Polish Orthography before 1500 The development of Polish orthography before the 16th century is generally divided into two periods: the period of non-complex spelling (grafia niezło- żona, 1136–14th c.) and the period of complex spelling (grafia złożona, since the end of the 14th c.; cf. Walczak 1999: 73–79). This terminology makes allowance for the fact that in the first of these periods the letters of the Latin alphabet were used indifferently for Latin and non-Latin pho- nemes alike, (e.g., both <s> and <z> were used to represent /s/, /z/, /ɕ/, /ʑ/, /ʃ/, and /ʒ/), whereas in the second period digraphs and trigraphs were used to make some, albeit still not all necessary, distinctions (for example, <ſz> was created to represent /ʃ/ and /ʒ/). 1.2. The task: Polish phonology in the 16th century At the beginning of the 16th century there was, therefore, no consistent system to represent the 35 consonant and 10 vowel phonemes of Early Middle Polish. Figure 1 is an attempt to outline a phoneme inventory for the whole 16th century (with IPA symbols indicating the approximate pro- nunciation of the main allophone of each phoneme rather than the “ortho- graphic” transcription usually employed in Polish language histories).2 The consonant system, which is already very similar to that of contem- porary Polish, is typically Slavonic in that it is deeply affected by palatality oppositions. The most striking characteristic of Polish is the existence of three-member chains of dental, postalveolar, and palatal affricates and sibi- lants (/ʦ : ʧ : ʨ/, /ʣ : ʤ : ʥ/, /s : ʃ : ɕ/, /z : ʒ : ʑ/). The status of voiced /ɦ/ is dubious, since it occurred only in loanwords and some interjections (e.g., historia ‘history’, handel ‘trade’, hałas ‘noise’, hej ‘hey!, ho!’) and is likely to have been spoken (as [ɦ], [h], or [ɣ]) only by most speakers from the East-Slavic territories of Poland and Lithuania (Perlin 2004: 13–14) and some educated people under their influence (cf. Stieber 1973: 145, § 123). Although others always pronounced <h> as /x/ (just like <ch>), which is Polish 221 the only possible pronunciation nowadays, the grapheme is still preserved in orthography. The phoneme /r̝ ʒ/, which resulted from /rʲ/ and resembled the Modern Czech consonant represented by <ř>, then developed into [r̝ ʒ] and eventually merged with /ʒ/ (cf. Stieber 1973: 68–69 and 109–110, §§ 48 and 82). The pronunciation of /ɫ/ as [w], which has become general in the 20th century, is attested as early as the end of the 16th century (cf. Stie- ber 1973: 110–112 and 129, §§ 84 and 101). Figure 1. Phoneme inventory of 16th-century Polish3 The relatively rich vowel inventory of 16th-century Polish is mainly due to the loss of the quantitative oppositions of the Old Polish period and their change into qualitative ones. The result was the emergence of two nasal vowels /ɛ/̃ and /ɔ̃/ of different timbre from /ã/ and /ãː/, respectively, and of the so-called “narrowed vowels” (samogłoski ścieśnione) /ɑ/4, /e/, and /o/ (often called pochylone ‘inclined’ or podwyższone ‘raised’) from /aː/, /ɛː/, and /ɔː/, respectively. In Modern Polish, these three vowel phonemes have now vanished, after merging back again with non-narrowed (or jasne ‘clear’) /a/ and /ɛː/ and in the case of /o/ with /u/, whereas the two nasal vowels and the remaining six oral vowels have remained unchanged up to the present.5 Word stress had been fixed on the first syllable since the 13th century and was now changing to the penultimate, but as it was not phonemic, it did not cause any problems for orthography. 222 Daniel Bunčić Confronted with these 44 phonemes of Polish, 16th-century spellers did not even have the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet we take for granted today: both <j> and <y> were just variants of <i>,6 <u> and <v> were positional allographs,7 <x> and <qu> were redundant, <s> and <z> often represented the same sound, <h> was often not pronounced at all,8 and <c> and <g> caused difficulties in that they represented /k/ and /ɡ/ before back vowels, but /ʦ/ and /j/ before front vowels. The letters <k> and <w>, which were very useful for printing Polish texts (the latter being originally nothing other than an allograph of <uu>9), were not needed for Latin texts, so that the Polish printer Jan Haller did not have them in his letter case and there- fore had to make them up of combinations with r rotunda <¢> (see figure 2, <dzÿewÿcza> in line 1 and <mathko> in line 2; cf. Wydra and Rzepka 1984: 306). Therefore, the Latin alphabet as such provided only for about a third of the Polish phonemes. 1.3. Free variation At the beginning of the 16th century, orthographic variation within one and the same text was immense. This is true even of the first Polish text printed in the Kingdom of Poland, the famous religious hymn Bogurodzica ‘Mother of God (literally: God-Bearer)’, which was included in a book written in Latin, the first Polish law codex compiled by the Great Chancel- lor of the Crown and archbishop of Gniezno Jan Łaski, Commune Incliti Polonie Regni Privilegium Constitutionum … [The Celebrated Kingdom of Poland’s Privilege of Constitutions …] (commonly called the Statuty Łaskiego ‘Łaski’s Statutes’), printed in 1506 by Jan Haller in Cracow. See for illustration some short excerpts10 (quoted from Woronczak 1962: 122 and plate 17, reproduced in figure 2) with an interlinear phonemic tran- scription: Figure 2. Beginning of the Bogurodzica (1506)11 Polish 223 1. bOgarodzÿcza dzÿewÿcza Bogeem [sic] Slawÿona maria. /bɔɡarɔʥiʦa ʥɛvʲiʦa bɔɡɛm sɫavʲɔna marɪjɑ/ God-Bearer, virgin, God-INSTR glorified Mary, 2. Uthwego ſzÿna goſpodzÿna mathko ſzwolona maria /u tveɡɔ sɪna ɡɔspɔʥina matkɔ zvɔlɔna marɪjɑ/ by your son lord mother chosen Mary, 3. Zÿſczÿ nam ſpuſczÿnam Kyrieleyzon … /zɪʃʧɪ nɑm spuɕʨi nɑm kɪrɪjɛlɛjzɔn …/ win-over we-DAT, have-mercy we-DAT, Kyrie eleison … 4. Uſlÿſch gloſſÿ napelnÿ miſlÿ czlowẏeczee … /usɫɪʃ ɡɫɔsɪ napɛɫɲi mɪɕli ʧɫɔvʲɛʧe …/ hear-IMP voices-ACC fill-IMP thoughts-ACC of-man-ACC … 5. daÿ na ſwÿecze zboſznÿ pobith /dɑj na ɕvʲɛʨɛ zbɔʒnɪ pɔbɪt/ give-IMP on world-LOC pious-ACC stay-ACC 6. po zÿwoczÿe Raÿſki przebÿth Kyrieleyzon. … /pɔ ʒɪvɔʨɛ rajskɪ pr̝ ʒɛbɪt kɪrɪjɛlɛjzɔn …/ after life-LOC paradisiac-ACC residence-ACC Kyrie eleison … 7. Ny ſzrzebrem ny ſzlothem naſz dyablv odkupyl /ɲi ɕr̝ ʒebrɛm ɲi zɫɔtɛm nɑs djɑbɫu ɔtkupʲiɫ/ neither silver-INSTR nor gold-INSTR us-ACC devil-DAT redeemed-3SG 8. ſzwa mocza zaſtapyl /svɔ̃ mɔʦɔ̃ zastɔ̃pʲiɫ/ his-INSTR power-INSTR defended-3SG 9. czyebye dla czlowyecze dal bog przeklocz ſzobye /ʨɛbʲɛ dlɑ ʧɫɔvʲɛʨɛ dɑɫ bok pr̝ ʒɛkɫoʨ sɔbʲɛ/ you for man-VOC gave-3SG god to pierce himself-DAT 10. bog racze nodze obye krew ſzwiantha ſz[l]a /bok rɛ̃ʦɛ nɔʣɛ ɔbʲɛ krɛf ɕvʲɛ̃tɑ ʃɫa/ side-ACC hands-ACC feet-ACC both-ACC blood holy went-3SG 11. ſboku naſbawyenye thobye /z bɔku na zbavʲɛɲe tɔbʲɛ/ from the side for salvation you-DAT 224 Daniel Bunčić Even in this short passage we can see the lack of coherence in the spell- ings used by the printer: <cz> can represent /ʦ/, /ʧ/, or /ʨ/; <ſz> represents /s/, /z/, /ʒ/, or /ɕ/; <y> indicates /i/, /ɪ/, /j/, or the palatality of the preceding consonant. Conversely, a phoneme combination such as /ʨɛ/ is written <cze>, <czie>, or <czye>, the same morpheme /bɪt/ is spelled <bith> and <bÿth> in adjacent lines, and both /z/ and /ʒ/ are spelled either <z> or <ſz>.
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