Ortographia by Stanislaw Zaborowski-title page

Poles adopted the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...

in the 12th century. This alphabet, however, was ill-equipped to deal with

Polish phonology The phonological system of the Polish language is similar in many ways to those of other Slavic languages, although there are some characteristic features found in only a few other languages of the family, such as contrasting postalveolar and ...

, particularly the

palatal consonant Palatals are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex. Characteristic ...

s (now written as '' ś'', '' ź'', '' ć'', '' dź''), the

retroflex A retroflex ( /ˈɹɛtʃɹoːflɛks/), apico-domal ( /əpɪkoːˈdɔmɪnəl/), or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the ha ...

group (now '' sz'', '' ż'', and '' cz'') as well as the nasal vowels (now written as '' ą'', '' ę''). Consequently, Polish spelling in the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

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 Polish orthography is the system of writing the Polish language. The language is written using the Polish alphabet, which derives from the Latin alphabet, but includes some additional letters with diacritics. The orthography is mostly phonetic, or ...

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 (''ɸ'' and ''ſ''), and eventually

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

s. Some examples from the

Bull of Gniezno ''Ex commisso nobis'', more commonly known as the ''Bull of Gniezno'', was a papal bull issued on July 7, 1136 by Pope Innocent II. The bull split off the Bishopric of Gniezno from the Archbishop of Magdeburg. From a historical perspective, t ...

(1136) and the

Holy Cross Sermons The Holy Cross Sermons ( pl, Kazania świętokrzyskie) are the oldest extant prose text in the Polish language, dating probably from the late 13th or early 14th century. The documents are named after the place where they were originally housed – ...

(13th-14th centuries):

Subsequent reforms

Many orthography reforms happened in the end of the 18th century (under the auspices of

Komisja Edukacji Narodowej The Commission of National Education ( pl, Komisja Edukacji Narodowej, KEN; lt, Edukacinė komisija) was the central educational authority in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, created by the Sejm and King Stanisław II August on October 14 ...

( Onufry Kopczyński) and during the course of the 19th century, when the modern Polish language developed differently in the three parts created after the

Partition of Poland The Partitions of Poland were three partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that took place toward the end of the 18th century and ended the existence of the state, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland and Lithuania for 12 ...

. A major reform of Polish orthography happened in 1936, as decided by

Polska Akademia Umiejętności The Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences or Polish Academy of Learning ( pl, Polska Akademia Umiejętności), headquartered in Kraków and founded in 1872, is one of two institutions in contemporary Poland having the nature of an academy of scien ...

. Lesser changes happened after 1956.

Literature

* scan* scan in the DjVu format* transcription Polish language Orthography {{Polish language

Subsequent reforms

See also

Literature