From: osinski@chtm.eece.unm.edu (Marek Osinski)
Subject: Re: Some more comments in English language, please
Date: Fri, 08 Jan 93 22:15:05 GMT
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

In article <1993Jan7.135629.4381@news.uni-stuttgart.de> zrfp0406@awssn3.rus.uni-stuttgart.de (Joerg Hertzer) writes:
>In article <#fxrf!f@lynx.unm.edu> osinski@chtm.eece.unm.edu (Marek Osinski) writes:

>>The simplest way to get more English language postings on s.c.p. is
>>to start a new thread in English. Usually a reply to an English text
>>woud be posted in English. So if you, Joerg or Wilhelm or anybody else,
>>are interested in a specific topic, just go ahead and post it.

>Right, but I want to take part in discussions (or at least read about),
>which are started by other persons.

Then, with some knowledge of Polish (see below), you may wish to ask a 
question in English about the topic of interest to you when you see one.

>>On the other hand, it is unrealistic to expect that Polish participants
>>of s.c.p. will stop using Polish as a means of communication. One important 
>>role of lists like s.c.p. is precisely to be able to exchange thoughts in 
>>one's native language. Nothing wrong with that.

>Ok, accepted as long as discussions with non polish people are not wanted.

You meant people not speaking Polish, didn't you? There are s.c.p.
readers who are not Polish but know the language.

>But I assume that opinions from a foreigners point of view often
>may be interesting.

Indeed. And I certainly would not want to discourage anybody interested
in Polish affairs from browsing through s.c.p.

Not long ago we had a lot of discussions in English about the Polish-
Jewish relations. Probably more than some readers would want to see. 
Perhaps this has something to do with the small number of postings in
English right now.

On the other hand, please keep also in mind that some readers of s.c.p.
may not know English that well. And their opinions expressed in Polish
may be as valuable as those of non-Polish speakers.

>>Plus, it provides a good
>>training for those who want to learn or practice Polish.

>No. Sorry, but this is not true for Polish because we use a medium,
>which is not able to transfer those special Polish characters.
>I have some (ok - poor) knowledge of Polish language. To me it is MUCH more
>difficult to read a Polish text with US characters only against one which
>includes full Polish character set. Can you imagine the problem
>to find a character sequence like 'lazienka' in a Polish-<any other language>
>dictionary, if you don't know if you have 'l' or 'l-', 'a' or 'a,' and so on?
>(Hope you know what I mean with 'l-' and 'a,')

I agree it may take a little bit more effort on your part, but the problem 
of finding any word in dictionary is not that difficult. After all, with 
'lazienka' you only need to check two possibilities: l or l/, and that's
it. I do not think this is any more difficult than, for example,
realizing that you need to search the word "zjadl/em" under "zjes'c'",
"tobie" under "ty", etc. Yeah, Polish is not easy to learn. :-(

>>In addition, to those of you who are interested in Polish affairs but do
>>not read Polish, let me suggest that you subscribe to English version of
>>Donosy. It is a daily bulletin of news from Poland, prepared by
>>physicists at the Warsaw University.
>I did so, and I was very glad about it, but:
>THERE IS NO MORE AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION of Donosy since last summer!

I am sorry to hear that. Michal Jankowski, could you please tell us what
happened? Is this just a temporary suspension?

>Joerg

Gruesse,

Marek Osinski