how bout getting rid of ó,ś,ź and ż?
Yeah. :-)
Then you would like to reverse the long process of adaptation of Latin characters to Polish speech patterns. It took several centuries to get to the point where the written text is no longer ambiguous and it correctly maps to all Polish phonemes. It took 400 years, from 1200 to 1600 - more or less, to evolve the written Polish to the point where it is now. After about 200 years of orthographic and grammatical anarchy (17th-18th century), it took another 200 years to standardize the present grammar rules.
In the beginning it was SEarly 1100s was the age of ambiguity, as the first scribes attempted to match 24 Latin letters to 40-something Polish phonemes. There were no digraphs, no trigraphs, no diacritics. So for example, the character S represented several different sounds: s, ś, š (sz), z, ź, ż, t, ć. The Gniezno Bull (1136), which lists about 400 Polish names of villages and people, demonstrates this: s: Sulirad (= Sulirad), ś: Sostrosz (= Siostrosz), sz: Calis (= Kalisz), z: Posdech (= Pozdziech), ż: Krisan (= Krzyżan).
Soft phonemes ź, ř (rz) were written as hard ones t, d, r, as in: Pantis (= Pęcisz), Mantina (= Męcina), Zdeuy (= Zdziewuj), Boranta (= Borzęta).
Phoneme K was written variously:
as C before a, o, u: Calis (= Kalisz), Cochan (= Kochan), Curassek (= Kurasek)
as K before e: Nakel (= Nakieł)
Nasal sounds were a real problem - too complex to describe it here..
With time ć was represented either by c or ch: zbauicel (= Zbawiciel), smicy => smircy => śmirci (= śmierci), modlich (= modlić), bych (= być) [from Kazania Swiętokrzyskie, Holly Cross Sermons, early 14th c.]
Character g was used to represent sound j: gego (= jego), gy (= ji), angela (= anjeła).
Crossed o, ø, was introduced to represent any nasal vowel: kaiøch (= kając), sø (= są), podiøly (= podjęli).
With time (15th c.), digraphs were introduced: ss, sz, cz, dz, rz. And even trigraphs, such as sch: schuka (= 'szuka). The special digraph, ending with y, was used to indicate soft consonants:
zye
mye (= ziemię), l
yosem (= losem),
lyud (= lud), ka
myen (= kamień), s
wyat (= świat).
Digraph ch was introduced to represent sound è (= cz).
The character y was also used to represent sound j ("jota"), especially at the beginning or the end of a syllable or a word.
Evolvement of spoken languageAnd you should also keep in mind that Polish spoken language evolved as well. Long gone are the times of long vowels, which still persist in Czech language - no more of (ā a) (ē e) (ō o) (ī i) (ȳ y) (ū u) duality, and their troubling visual representation. One proposal, which actually had not been implemented, was suggested in 1440 by Jakub Parkoszowic, rector of Kraków Academy: double the letters a, e, o, u to represent their long counterparts. Examples: a => Adaam, daal; e => gee (= je), umee (= umie); o => otoosz (=otóż), mood (miód); uu: kaptuur, kuur.
The slanted vowels á, é - as opposed to open vowels a, e - are also gone from Polish speech. Only the lonely ó remains, but it evolved to something sounding like u over the centuries.
Gone are soft consonants p', b', w', f', m'.
Consonant clusters have become much more simplified as well, as in:
czs > cs > c,
dźs > ćs > c,
żs > szs > ss > s
śćc > jc
dźc > ćc > jc
źdźs > śćs > js
So called yers are also gone:
pьsъ > pies (dog) but pьsa > psa (of dog)
sъnъ > sen (sleep)
Strengthening of softness: s', z ', t', d ', n' => ś, ź, ć, dź, ń, as in:
losь > łos' > łoś (elk)
Transition of softness:
gostь > gost' > gość (guest)
sъpi > spi > śpi (is asleep)
You can read all about here: History of Polish, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_Polish_language
The most interesting is the first part: "Phonetic processes".
Standardization of spellingDespite several attempts towards improved spelling most authors failed to organize Polish spelling.
So practically, cleaning up and organization of Polish graph system and orthography was mainly due to printers. The printing houses attempted to simplify graphics system, which consisted mainly of simplification of digraphs and trigraphs to represent consonants unknown in Latin. They did so because diversity of language representation inhibited production of books.
Typesetters began to distinguish skewed vowels from the open ones by using slashes, they consistently distinguished between the l and ł, they have allocated the appropriate functions to y vs. i, they introduced punctuation. Until then no dots an commas were used and prepositions and short words were frequently aggregated with words that followed. The printers began using capital letters at the start of new sentences.
As you can see, the publisher-printer interfered with the text of the authors and employees of printing houses. Editors, proofreaders, typesetters - often graduates of the Kraków Academy and versed in the issues of language, incorporated wishes of their employers, who did not have to be experts in Polish language. The uniform shape of XVI c. Polish orthography is due to codifiers connected with printing houses. Among them were Jan Seklucjan, Jan Sandecki-Malecki and Jan Januszowski, who wrote a book in1594: "Nowy karakter polski ..." containing, among others, orthographic projects of writers and poest, such as Jan Kochanowski and £ukasz Górnicki.
Spelling of consonants of those times combined complex digraphs and trigraphs with diacritics. Digraphs were used for consonants cz, dz, sz, dż; soft consonants ś, ć, ź, dź were represented by acute accent; ż was written as z with dot above.
...
Following Jan Hus reforms of Czech language Stanisław Zaborowski (1513) suggested total replacement of digraphs and trigraphs by diacritics on much larger scale than introduced before by Jakub Parkoszowic. However, only - and £ survived from his proposalsEdward Polański, Reformy ortografii polskiej - wczoraj, dziś, jutro, BULLETIN DE LA SOCIÉTÉ POLONAISE DE LINGUISTIQUE, fasc. LX, 2004, ISSN 0032-3802,
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I am skipping further description of the continuation of the process, from the beginning of 19th c. until now. But I can say that because it was such a long complex historical process this is why we have inherited quite an inconsistent graphic system, made of combination of digraphs and diacritics. Part of it has its source in attempt in staying as close as possible to Latin (hence digraphs). Full diacritics based system could have been prohibitively expensive for printers of those days. Diacritics are also a major internalization problem. Even today, Czechs use the Polish-like digraphs "cz" and "ch" on international forum to present the name of their own country and themselves:
Česká republika (Czech Republic), Čechy (Czechy), Česko (Czechia), èeština (Czech language), etc.
The situation has dramatically improved with introduction of Internet and internalization efforts. First there were those tables of 256 characters representing all sounds and letters of groups of related languages: Latin-1, Latin-2, etc. As long as Germans could write to Frenchies using Latin-1, Poles were constricted only to those languages in Latin-2 group. A Pole could not ever write a letter to a Frenchman in proper French when simultaneously citing Polish words with diacritics.
This trouble is gone by now since introduction of Unicode. Consequently, diacritics are no longer a problem - at least in electronic media, not restricted by typesetting costs and other issues stil significant in traditional media.
So Rybnik, rather than removing these pesky diacritics, I would go all the way Czechs went. I would cleanup all the mess and replaced digraphs by diacritics:
cz => è
rz => ř
sz => š
ch => x
dz => ʒ: ʒwon (= dzwon)
dż => ǯ: ǯem (= dżem)
dź => ʒ́: ʒ́iwny (= dziwny)
And then, I would simplify everything by removing all the accents. This way we would go back to the year of Gniezno Bull, 1136 :-)
