How do I use the Polish alphabet on the computer without changing the language.?
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010 at
11:32 am
It's the same letters except there's little marks on them. But no other "letters". I don't wanna have everything in Polish, but I wanna type certain words or phrases in Polish using their alphabet, or should I just use the English alphabet, it won't always come out right, though.
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Tagged with: english alphabet • phrases
Filed under: Polish Language
Use the Character Map or learn the Alt codes for the characters you need.
The Character Map is in your computer already, Start > Programs> Accessories> System Tools> Character Map.
Believe me Polish people are not idiots and it is really easy for them to read their own language words without Polish letters. If you think they can’t do it, they can treat you as an ignorant. Polish culture is not the culture of "sweet talkers" like English for example. We know MUCH more about you than you know about us. If you don’t know how to use Polish letters just don’t do it. Polish people living abroad sometimes don’t use Polish signs (especialy when they use internet communicators) because they use English in their computers in their daily life. It is nothing wrong because it is informal language. If they write something formal in Polish they use proper Polish.
Generally speaking, Polish is a phonetical language what means that we write as we read. One letter or one digraph means always one sound. That is why there is no such problems like "How to spell it ?" in Polish. Example: a letter "A" is ALWAYS read in Polish the same as the sound "A" in the latin word "Anno Domini". Phonetically Polish is much closer to Latin than English. The question should be rather "Why English spelling evolwed so far from original Latin way of spelling, if English speakers use Latin alphabet?"
We don’t use letters like: Q, X and V. Useing of double letters is also very rare in Polish because it is illogical for us to use one by one letters that sound the same. If we use double letters you can ALWAYS hear both, the same sounds in the word. What is the sens of usening two identical letters one by one if you can’t hear it in reading?
Our language has also some original letters like; ą, ę, ó, ć, ń, ś, ź, ż, ł, and some digraphs: rz, ch, sz, dz, dź, dż. The way how to spell it, is usualy quite logical and is connected with basic letters. Example the letter "ł" (read like "w" in the word "wood") is a derivative from the letter "l" so it sounds similiar. Isn’t it logical?
Somtimes one sound can be written with the help of two diffterent letters like "ó" and "u" or "ż" and "rz". These letters sounds EXACTLY the same but you can’t use it alternately because it is a BIG, popular mistake, straight from primary school.