Die altpolnischen Orthographien des 16. Jahrhunderts: Stanisław Zaborowski, Jan Seklucjan,Stanisław Murzynowski, Jan Januszowski by Stanisław Urbańczyk; Reinhold OleschReview by: H. LeemingThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 62, No. 4 (Oct., 1984), pp. 574-575Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4208969 .

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574 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

Die altpolnischen Orthographien des i6. Jahrhunderts: Stanislaw Zaborowski, Jan Seklucjan, Stanistaw Murzynowski, Jan Januszowski. Edited by Stanislaw Urbanczyk, with Reinhold Olesch. Slavistische Forschungen, 37. B6hlau, Cologne, Vienna, I983. xi + 208 pp. Facsimiles. References.

As Professor Urbanfczyk points out in his foreword, this welcome example of collaboration between Polish and German scholars recalls such collabor- ation in the sixteenth century, since it was immigrant printers from South and West Germany who helped to produce some of these early treatises on Polish orthography. Their publication now has the twofold object of saving from oblivion some books rare and difficult of access, and encouraging scholars to take an interest in a rather neglected branch of Polish historical grammar.

The earliest Cracow printers continued the haphazard chaos of the medieval scribes, using Latin letters with two phonetic functions and certain digraphs with three or four. Gradually, in spite of commercial caution and the fear of alienating their readers by hasty innovations, the printers tried to introduce some order. Particular difficulties were caused by recent or current changes in the vocalic system. What had been a difference of quantity half a century earlier, when Parkosz advocated the use of the same letter o, singly for a short nasal vowel, doubled oo for its long counterpart, had now been transformed into a qualitative distinction; this was given a lasting solution in I52I with the introduction of e caudata to distinguish the new front nasal from the back vowel represented by a. Other problems requiring an orthographic solution were the closed reflexes of earlier long oral vowels, the soft consonants and the expalatal sibilants.

Urbanczyk's discursive and informative introduction (pp. I-50) begins with an account of the phonology and orthography of Old Polish. Then each of the five treatises is discussed in turn, together with such biographical information as is available about the authors. The texts themselves are of varying interest. Jan Seklucjan (I549) gives little more than an alphabet with examples, probably sufficient aid for the readers of the catechism in which it was published. He does not regard the unstable state of the orthography as a bar to the intelligent reader's understanding, since he may be expected to deduce the value of unfamiliar characters from the context; he concedes the inadequacy of his treatment of the subject but lays the blame for this, as for other shortcomings, on the printers. Murzynowski's Orthographia polska is given in two slightly different versions which appeared in translations of the scriptures (Matthew's Gospel and part one of the New Testament) published at K6nigsberg in I55 I; the first of these facsimiles is the least satisfactory - otherwise the reproductions are of a high standard. Although Murzynowski offers more comment than Seklucjan, his text is little more than a statement of usage.

The most interesting tract is the earliest of the collection: Stanislaw Zaborowski's Orthographia; this is given in facsimiles of the Latin text in two editions (Cracow, I5I4 and I5I8). A Latin transliteration and a Polish translation are also provided. Zaborowski had been advising printers on orthographic matters since I 507 when Florian Ungler sought his

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REVIEWS 575

assistance. Zaborowski proposed a system which, by making greater use of diacritic marks would have eliminated i and z as markers of consonantal softness and the hushing fricatives respectively. Although his Orthographia was published eleven times between I 5 I 4 and I 5 I 5, Zaborowski's ideas had no more success than Pitman's 'initial teaching alphabet', produced in response to G. B. Shaw's plea for a more methodical and logical English orthography. The last contribution reprinted here is Jan Januszowski's Nowy karakter polski, in which the relative merits of three systems are discussed: those of Jan Kochanowski (also printed separately), Lukasz Gornicki andJanuszowski himself. This is a typographical joy, employing elegant Gothic, Italic, and Roman types, and introducing Gornicki's highly decorative alphabet, which according to its inventor could serve any language in the world, in proof of which the Church Slavonic text of three psalms is offered. For its general cultural interest and especially the light it sheds on sixteenth-century Polish awareness of and attitudes to linguistic problems this text alone makes the book a welcome and rewarding venture. Thanks are due both to Professors Urbanfczyk and Olesch for making such fascinating materials more readily available. London H. LEEMING

Bauer, Eva. Deutsche Entlehnungen im tschechischen Wortschatz desJ. A. Comenius. Studia Slavica et Baltica, 6. Aschendorff, Miinster, I983. 302 pp.

Bibliography. Appendixes. DM 48.oo.

I 983 WAS something of a boom year for Comeniological lexicography from Germany, for the present glossary was preceded by Hubert Rosel's comprehensive Worterbuch zu den tschechischen Schriften des J. A. Comenius (reviewed in SEER, vol. 62, no. 3, pp. 430-3). The two works are intimately connected, the present one being a detailed study of one segment of the same basic corpus. The main body of the work is a glossary of all the Germanisms in Comenius's Czech (some 1,220 entries with an extra I20

toponyms), with the exclusion of prehistoric loans common to all or most of the Slavonic languages, calques (except for partial calques such as nadhera) and syntactic Germanisms that do not lend themselves to lexicographical treatment. Each entry consists of the customary grammatical annotation, modern Czech and German translation equivalents, a detailed etymology, cross-references to the main etymological dictionaries and assorted chrono- logical and 'cultural' background notes. Cases where there could be some doubt as to the role of German, e.g. as the merely possible or probable, but not necessary mediator of lexical items from third languages, are duly acknowledged. The whole is well laid out and of a suitably scholarly standard, although one might question the utility of the exercise: might it not in fact be more fruitful to incorporate the material in a larger dictionary of German loan-words in Czech since many items here antedate Comenius, since there is a large element of chance in just which items occur in his works, and since (therefore) one is frustrated in the search for items which might well be of similar antiquity (verpanek?)? Less satisfactory is the second

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