On a practical side - even if you know Cyrillic, lowercase letters are kinda awkward to read at a glance - very blocky, way less a/descenders, many look alike and they are a lazy copy of upper case.
And Cyrillic cursive is a nightmare.
Not sure anyone implied that Poland should use the Cyrillic alphabet...
> On a practical side - even if you know Cyrillic, lowercase letters are kinda awkward to read at a glance - very blocky, way less a/descenders, many look alike and they are a lazy copy of upper case.
That's both pretty subjective, and partly incorrect, given the latest tendencies in type design: https://www.lettersoup.de/what-shall-be-done-for-bulgarian-c...
> And Cyrillic cursive is a nightmare.
Sorry but Cyrillic cursive is 90% the same as Latin cursive
What about Bulgaria? Or Ukraine?
Politically and religiously more connected to Rome, not the West as Rome stopped being the head of the West for centuries now. But Poland is also ethnically, linguistically and culturally closer to the slavic nations.
Vs.The the east slavic and south slavic ones.
Notice that similarly to other west slavs we are Roman Catholic.
As for political connection, Rome was almost non existent for centuries.
Rome has been nonexistent for centuries, but the foundations of cultures for most of Europe except the Slavic countries come from the interactions between Rome and the Germanic tribes.
Roman tradition (Western Europe): Legal behavior is ethical behavior.
Slavic/Polish: Laws and ethics are two different things.
Roman: Behaving politely is paramount and one needs to maintain decorum. Positivity.
Slavic: People express themselves plainly and openly; complaining, criticizing, negativity, and rudeness are okay if that's how people feel.
Roman: Imperialism and cultural imperialism. One should help others by spreading their superior culture.
Slavic: Acceptance, tolerance, and fitting in. Polish people adapt to cultures they go to, and for most of history, oppressed groups (like Jews) flocked to Poland for their (relative) tolerance.
Etc.
My point wasn't about which slavic groups poland is more closer to. The point is that poland is a slavic nation and hence far more closer to other slavic nations than to italy/rome/etc.
> If we talking about cultural inspirations, we are much more influenced by ancient Rome and Greece, classical literature and arts than to other Slavic nations.
All slavic nations are more influenced by ancient rome and greece than each other because the slavic nations didn't contribute much to literature/arts until fairly recently. Russian leaders didn't call themselves tsars ( russianized caesar ) for no reason. And it's not an accident that cryllic alphabet looks awfully like the greek alphabet.
Your point is true of all northern europe really as northern europe didn't produce any meaningful culture until the past few hundred years. Prior to that, northern europe had to rely on roman/greek arts because northern europe was lacking in culture/art.
Sure poland is more influenced by rome/greece than by russia or ukraine. But that's the same for russia/ukraine. They are more "inspired" by rome/greece than poland. Doesn't change the fact that they are all slavic nations though.
"Ever since the 1620 Battle of White Mountain, the Czech people have been historically characterised as "tolerant and even indifferent towards religion"."
"Pew Research Center found in 2015 that 72% of the population of Czech Republic declared to be irreligious"
Also (2):
"With the fall of the Habsburgs in 1918, more than a million Czechs (including 300 priests) left the Roman Catholic Church. Most chose not to affiliate with another church."
Why such a reaction? In (1) we read how the Catholic Church and the rulers behaved before, under the Habsburgs control:
"the whole population was forcibly converted to Roman Catholicism—even the Utraquist Hussites. All kinds of Protestant communities including the various branches of Hussites, Lutherans and Reformed were either expelled, killed, or converted to Roman Catholicism."
Also (3)
"Royal decrees pertaining to religion granted Protestant lords, knights, and burghers the right to choose either conversion or emigration. Only about one-quarter of the noble families living in Bohemia and Moravia prior to 1620 remained"
"The emigrations devastated Bohemia and Moravia, which may have lost as much as one-half of their population."
Then in 1781 Joseph II "abolished restrictions on the personal freedom (serfdom) of the peasants, and he granted religious toleration."
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Czech_Republic
2) https://fee.org/articles/how-state-religion-made-the-czechs-...
3) https://www.britannica.com/topic/Czechoslovak-history/The-Co...
In short, communism simultaneously increased Czech tradition religious apatheticism and Polish Catholicism.
And the serious distancing from the same church by Czechs goes back even to centuries before that, as I've quoted before. Also note how Joseph II helped there only 9 years after that 1772 you mention.
This gave Poland a position where it had strong economic progress, both due to an excellent school system and membership in the EU, but where it was discriminated against by Western powers which pushed Greco-Roman-Germanic culture, which is quite distinct and different from Slavic culture. Many Poles have an unwarranted inferiority complex, and many Western Europeans have a superiority complex.
The Polish Plumber ads played on some of that, in uniquely Polish ways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_plumber
Most of the Ukrainians and Belorussians I've met were either Catholic or had Catholic grannies (and were atheist/agnostic themselves).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Ukraine#Demograp...
Wouldn't it be "better off not using Cyrillic for political reasons" for Bulgaria? Hardly. But why is it for Poland then?
Wouldn't it be "better off not using Cyrillic for political reasons" for Ukraine? I'm sure many people believe so (I personally met Ukrainians who started using DIY Latin-based script after 2014). Yet no officials seem to consider this seriously.
On the practical side, do you know any language that uses Cyrillic alphabet? If no, then you are not used to it and this is why it looks awkward, blocky, etc. and cursive is not a nightmare and is very readable, much so like cursive text written in English.
If you do know any language that uses Cyrillic, can you provide examples to support your characterizations?
Pan-slavism isn't a bad idea. The bad idea is dominance of pan-slavism by Putin or the latest incarnation of the USSR / Russian Empire.
Most of the Slavic cultures are culturally closer to each other than to Western Europe, although Poland has really (and rather unfortunately) westernizing since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of the EU, etc. Polish culture is being replaced by Germanic culture, which is quite sad to see.
A modern pan-slavic incarnation would likely look like the USA, the EU, or some of the partnerships of African countries, where there is free trade and some degree of free travel. I think prerequisite to that would be to fix some of the governance issues in Slavic countries, though. Right now, the concern would be that any such partnership would be bullied around by Putin.