Polish language diacritical marks at risk!

Polish language experts launched a campaign Thursday to preserve the challenging system of its diacritical marks, saying the tails, dots and strokes are becoming obsolete under the pressure of IT and speed.

The drive, initiated by the state-run Council of the Polish Language, is part of the UNESCO International Mother Language Day. The campaign's Polish name is complicated for a non-Polish keyboard: "Je,zyk polski jest a,-e,."

That's a pun meaning that Polish language needs its tails and is top class. Part of the meaning is lost and the pronunciation sounds wrong if the marks aren't there.

Computer and phone keyboards require users to punch additional keys for Polish alphabet. To save time, Poles skip the nuances, and sometimes need to guess the meaning of the message that they have received. This is also true for IT equipment users of other languages with diacritical marks, like Russian or Romanian.

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I heard this today. It is ridiculous. How freaking hard is it to punch extra keys on the keyboard. Talk about flipping lazy.

A good topic! But the nuances get saved when you spell words creatively and you can use synonims or add information to prevent guessing.
There are further methods like creating new words, using idiomatic phrases, what not.

This is a different thread on this forum but with regards to creativity and the relative ease of making a new word I don't see my there are so many new English words added to the Polish language these days. It wouldn't be difficult at all to make the word sound Slavic, Polish.

I am not sure how English replacements can solve that problem within one generation. Poles may choose English as their favourite second language in a few generations but not yet. Messaging in plain font is easier to achieve by creativity.

I do not have these problems when messaging with my Polish friends. There are new words I do not know but that is not a problem.

I didn't say that English words in Polish are the problem with diacritical marks, quite the contrary since they don't have them. I was just talking about the influence of foreign words in Polish will mess up the language. The article speaks of it being inconvenient for people to write with the Polish diacritical marks via texting or typing on a computer, there are add on available for download to solve that problem, no need to be that lazy.

Well- for the OP: Russian uses different alphabet than Polish.
And good luck if you try to send texts (sms) with Polish diactricts in- it will not only be harder (special software necessary) it will also take longer and SMSs will have an ability to contain only 80(-ish) characters (thanx to unicode). Unless, of course, you wanna the special codepage (like 8859-2) to come back- and as a user of computers and Polish native speaker, I would say- you would be mad if you wan't it.

Diacrits are dying out in informal communication? good.

i've just been chatting about this offline. in the early days of mobile phones one paid for the amount of space used. ą ć ę etc cost more to send than a c e

therefore once the culture of using english language characters set in it became too late to do anything about it.

however, one can argue that folks these days use smartphones (mini computers) so it shouldn't be a problem to set up for correct Polish language.

Why good? I'm Polish and I ALWAYS use Polish diactritical marks. For me they sound cute. :D

When I text with a close friend we do not bother to use Polish special letters in all words except when it is better to do so.

But playing with omissions is also a fun game.

Yes, the diacrits are cute and when I text with a woman I am using them. It gives the communication a touch of commitment and tenderness :)

It's because most phones and computers are programed in the world language, English. If Polish was the dominant language in the world as English is all those ą ć ę would already be on keys.


It does make the word have more pizazz. You can for instance say ide instead of idę as many people talk and understand exactly what's someone saying but it wont sound as good.

I have not been using them for ages and once in Poland most people I communicate with via mobile don't use them. That doesn't mean that I am losing the ability to use them. It doesn't happen that fast. However communication in more then one languages makes using them difficult.

I've always found the Polish spelling intriguing ... makes me think a word is impossible to pronounce!

I always use them - no problem at all. Most of the Poles I speak with on gg or by texting don't seem to bother though.

anyone got a link for the download that will allow me to use the marks in emails?

You can install them on any keyboard - just use the help function on Windows to find out how. Takes a few seconds.

i *think i've installed it. what are the keyboard shortcuts to actually type them?

alt (right) plus the letter a+ alt ą

excellent
many thanks

Oh, I forgot. if you want to write ź you have to push alt + x.