Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/670

 650 POLAND (LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE) note, disapDearing early in 1864. Tens of thou- sands had perished, and equally numerous were the victims of transportation to Siberia, ex- ecution, incarceration, and confiscation. The peasantry, however, were left to enjoy the fruits of enfranchisement. Lithuania, Volhy- nia, and Podolia were violently Russianized, the separate features of the administration in the kingdom of Poland systematically abol- ished, this country being divided into ten new governments (1867), and placed under the ad- ministrative senate at St. Petersburg (1868), the university of Warsaw and the other schools Russianized (1869), and the Russian calendar (O. S.) introduced (1870). Among the princi- pal works on the history of Poland are, in Polish, those of Naruszewicz, Niemcewicz, Bandtke, Lelewel, and Szajnocha; and in other languages, those of Oginski, Rulhiere, Salvandy, Brzozowski, Roepell, Mieroslawski, L. Ohodzko, and Caro. POLAND, Language and Literature of. The Po- lish language belongs to the northwestern group of the Slavic division of the Indo-Eu- ropean tongues. Its principal dialects, though not materially differing from each other, are those of Masovia, Little Poland and Galicia, Lithuania, and Great Poland, besides the more degenerate Silesian. The alphabet consists of the following letters: a (short Italian a), a (French on), b, 15 (soft, combining b and y con- sonant), c (tz), 6 (tch, very soft), cz (tch), ch (kh, Ger. ch), d, e (short Italian), e (compressed, as in yes), (Fr. in), f, g (hard), A, i (short Ital- ian), j (y consonant), k, t(l, very hard), I (It. gl as in gli), m, n, tf, (Fr. gn), o (short Italian), 6 (compressed, approaching u), p, p (soft, b and y consonant), r, rz (rzh, Fr. rj in one), s, (sh, very soft), sz (sh), t, u (short Italian), w (v), x, y (resembling the Ger. u), z, z (zh, Fr. j), z (zh, very soft). / serves to soften various consonants, replacing the ' ; dr6b', little poultry, gen. drobiu; &y<?, to live, zycie, life ; koti, horse, gen. konia ; wie$, village, gen. wsi. The accent, except in foreign words and in compounds, is constantly on the penultimate: rodak, country- man, gen. roddkn, dat. rodakowi. As in Latin, there is no article: cnota, virtue, a virtue, the vir- tue. There are seven cases of declension : nom- inative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, instrumental (mieczem, by or with the sword), and locative (after certain prepositions, as w Bogu, in God). The forms of declension depend upon the termination, the gender, and the kind, words of the same termination denoting per- sons, animals, and lifeless objects having in the masculine severally diff erentf orms. The gender of nouns is mostly determined by the termina- tion. There are three genders for nouns, adjec- tives, pronouns, verbs, and participles, as : Moj dobry kothany ojcies dat. My good beloved fa- ther gave ; Moja dobra kochana matka (mother) dala ; Moje dobre Icochane dziecko (child) dato. The following may serve as examples of the de- clension of nouns and adjectives in the mascu- line and feminine singular : wielki las, (a, the) large forest, wielkiego lasu, wielkiemu lasowi, wielki las, icielki lesie!, wielkim lasem, (w) wiel- Mm lesie; wielka rzeka, (a, the) large river, wielkiej rzeki, wielkiej rzece, wielka rzek^wielka rzeko !, wielka rzeka, (w) wielkiej rzece. The comparative degree is formed by the syllable szy (nom. mas. sing.), the superlative by naj and szy, thus: story, old, starszy, older, naj- starszy,^ oldest ; mocny, strong, mocniejszy, naj- mocniejszy. The numerals are as follows : je- den (Sans, eka; compare also the Heb. e' Jiad and the Hung, egy), dwa (Sans, dm, Gr. dvo, Lat. duo), trzy (Sans, tri, Gr. rpel<;, Lat. tres), cztery (Sans, tchatur, Lat. quatuor), pi$6 (Sans, pan- tchan, Gr. Trivre), szest (Sans, shash, Lat. sex), siedm (Sans, saptan, Lat. septem), oSm (Sans. ashtari), dziewied, dziesigt (Sans, datfan, Lat. decerri), sto (Sans, tfata, Lat. centum), tysiac (thousand). The verb is exceedingly rich in forms, which serve to express frequency, inten- sity, inception,duration, and other modes of ac- tion or being. The f ormatives consist chiefly of prepositions and other particles, as in German, thus: znad, to know, Ger. kennen; poznac, to recognize, Ger. erkennen; rwac, to tear, wyrwac, to snatch, Ger. entreissen ; rozerwac, to tear asunder, Ger. zerreissen ; rozrywac, long or frequently to tear asunder; porozrywac, to tear asunder to the last. 6 marks the infini- tive, f" the past : znam, I know, znad, to know, znalem, I knew ; the persons are distinguished by the termination : znam, I know, znasz, thou knowest, zna (he, she, it) knows, znamy, znacie, znaja, we, you, they know. Diminutives, de- nominatives, and other derivatives are abun- dant. Compounds are rare. The words of a sentence can be arranged almost as freely as in Latin, misunderstanding being precluded by the distinctness of the formative terminations. ID flexibility, richness, power, and harmony the Polish is hardly excelled by any other language of Europe ; its grammatical structure is fully developed and firmly established, its orthogra- phy precise and perfect. The principal gram- mars are by Kopczynski, Mrongovius, Bandtke, Mrozinski, Poplinski, and Muczkowski (Cra- cow, 1845) ; the principal dictionaries by Linde, Bandtke, Mrongovius (Konigsberg, 1835), and Trojanski (Posen, 1835-'46). The oldest remnants of Polish literature consist of prov- erbs, popular songs and tales, and a religious song in praise of the Virgin (Roga rodzica) attributed to St. Adalbert (Wojciech), who lived in the time of the first Christian mon- arch of Poland, toward the close of the 10th century. The Latinizing influence of Chris- tianity, and of the universities of western Europe, which were generally frequented by the Poles, prevented the development of a na- tional literature in Poland during the middle ages ; and all the literary productions of that period, as well as the laws of the country, were written in Latin. Among the most important of the former are the chronicles of Martin Gal- lus (about 1130), Kadlubek (1220). Boguphalus (1250), and Martin Skrzenbski, surnamed Polo-