Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 October 25

= October 25 =

When did é disappear from Polish spelling?
When did the letter é disappear from Polish spelling? According to History of Polish, it was used in the 19th century for historically long e that had developed into a vowel similar to i or y. I first encountered this in Chopin's Polish songs, which explains some rhymes, e.g. (from Wiosna, Op. posth. 74 No. 2, text by Stefan Witwicki):

Jakże ładny chyży Ledwo widny oku Coraz wyżéy wyżéy Już zginął w obłoku

(I quote the text from the first Polish edition, which is not quite what Witwicki actually seems to have written.) Double sharp (talk) 22:09, 25 October 2019 (UTC)


 * According to the Polish chapter in "The World's Major Languages", 16th-century Polish had the six spellings "a", "á", "e", "é", "o", and "ó" which wrote six separate vowel sounds. However, the vowels written by "a" and "á" later merged with each other, while the vowels written by "e" and "é" also merged with each other, so that the diacritics in the spellings "á" and "é" were eventually dropped as serving no purpose.  But the vowel written as "ó" merged with the vowel written as "u" (not with the vowel written as "o"), so the spelling "ó" still survives... AnonMoos (talk) 05:57, 26 October 2019 (UTC)


 * I'm aware of this; I'm asking about the (possibly approximate) time period when the merger and consequent dropping of é happened, since it was evidently still around in the early 19th century. (It would also be interesting to know for á.) Double sharp (talk) 08:11, 26 October 2019 (UTC)


 * By the way, I just now realized that the purpose of "ż" in Polish spelling is to avoid a "zz" digraph. There are are "cz", "sz", and "rz" spellings, where the "z" indicates palatalization, but "zz", using a second "z" to indicate palatalized "z" ([ʒ]), was apparently a step too far, so "ż" was created instead...
 * Sorry I can't help with the exact chronology of the disappearance of the acute in "é". AnonMoos (talk) 12:56, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

1891: pl:Samog%C5%82oski_pochylone. Burzuchius (talk) 13:10, 26 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you! That's exactly what I wanted to know. It seems the history of these vowels has varied across dialects and centuries rather than being a straight road to the merger. Double sharp (talk) 22:57, 26 October 2019 (UTC)