Old Orthography

Old Orthographic spellings This largely applies for those who perform early music; however, some spellings were acceptable until the early-20 th century. Jan Kochanowski, a Polish Renaissance poet, codified the Polish language in the 16 th century and proposed some letters that do not exist today namely, vowels with acute and grave accents to denote length, as well as ç (cz [t͡ʂ]), θ (dz [d͡z]), θ´ (dź [d͡ʑ]), θ˙ (dż [d͡ʐ]), ŗ (rz [ʐ]), σ (ś [ɕ]), and  ß (sz [ʂ]).

While most of these letters are quite rare, I have found them, namely ß, in anthologies of liturgical music that was published in the 18 th century in Kraków, which could also be attributed to the fact that German was the official language of the Habsburg Empire in the late 18th century. Additionally, some editions may include ƶ as a replacement for ż [ʐ], but be careful as this is also quite common as a fancier way to write titles of pieces. This is still common as well in handwriting as a way to distinguish ż from ź. Also, quite common was the use of j and sometimes y in place of i. Names like Marian, Maria, and nouns of Greek and Latin origin (historia, ortografia) were spelled Marjan, Marya, historja, ortografja but have since been consolidated to the [i] vowel. The most likely encounter will be a sole j which is just an old orthographic spelling of i. If the word is of Slavic origin, the word has been replaced with the historical palatalized r — rz [ʐ].