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The curious case of the disappearing Polish S (2015)

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Re: The curious case of the disappearing Polish S (2015)

#81

The real issue here is first that browsers don't expose a simple way to check for key combinations and second that developers don't bother building their own. You'll find on any number of sites that an intended key combination can also be invoked with additional modifiers of alt or shift or whatnot. Even here, the code shown only fixes the broader issue on windows; alt+cmd+s still gets blocked. There should be a prop…

This bug comes from a programmer trying to fix one problem - users press Control S and get a save dialog - by altering some fundamental and bug-prone behaviour.

Imagine the damage programmers could do if they had more options to meddle easily! They have low-level APIs if they need them to hook keys. Best leave it at that.

Meanwhile, there is the accesskey attribute in HTML to let you customise shortcut keys: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/...

Re: The curious case of the disappearing Polish S (2015)

#83
Sadly it is not just Medium, but a bunch of other Windows apps too. For example, in Active Presenter, typing one of the letters (I think it is Ó) stops screen recording, which makes the program unusable in many situations - I cannot record myself typing anything in Polish. Other apps similarly assign shortcuts to Alt + Ctrl + letter, somehow overriding the keyboard layout driver.

Re: The curious case of the disappearing Polish S (2015)

#84
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. They have to change a lot of things to better align with Europe, especially if they join the EU. They're already working on moving to the European train gauge, they set Christmas to December 25th, etc. but there's still a long way to go.

Cyrillic didn't prevent Bulgaria from joining EU, why should it be a problem for Ukraine?

Cyrillic is not a problem for joining the EU. But adopting Latin script would help Ukraine "move away" from Russia even more.

Re: The curious case of the disappearing Polish S (2015)

#85
post #60

Meanwhile, in 2026 I suddenly cannot type capital Ś in Edge on Mac. I feel like I moved back in time 25 years or so.

I noticed it too, but for Teams. Is it because they are both MS apps?

Yep. No one else would shove bing search down your throat. https://learn.microsoft.com/pl-pl/answers/questions/5658359/...

Re: The curious case of the disappearing Polish S (2015)

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukraine absolutely must ditch Cyrillic alphabet, after the war. There will be plenty of things to change.

I sometimes hear the same in my circles about Persian ditching the perso-arabic script. I don't get it, why can't you align a country however you like without creating a huge rift between a big population and years of literature, material etc etc? One can learn multiple scripts and almost all literate people know the latin script globally nowadays. Besides, sad to see the whole world just use the latin script in the…

Out of curiosity, what's the proposed replacement script?

Re: The curious case of the disappearing Polish S (2015)

#87
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cyrillic didn't prevent Bulgaria from joining EU, why should it be a problem for Ukraine?

Cyrillic is not a problem for joining the EU. But adopting Latin script would help Ukraine "move away" from Russia even more.

Ukraine is the Russia (882-1237), Russian Empire and Russian Federation are Russian.

It's like to say that Britain must adopt Cyrillic to move away from USA because they both use English language. :-/

Re: The curious case of the disappearing Polish S (2015)

#88
post #2

I believe the fact that Polish uses the Latin alphabet (with a small Slavic twist to express the extra sounds) meant it was much easier for Poland to align itself westward. I think the average Pole is much closer culturally to the Western neighbours than to a Ukrainian or Russian (maybe apart from cuisine).

Dirty summary (not involving AI):

Just like Christianity arrived in Poland by marriage of Mieszko with Czech princess Doubravka/Dobrawa in 10th century, we also adapted Czech alphabet (and thus Latin) from Jan Hus efforts of codifying Czech language. Scholars believe that around same time Polish began to develop as a separate language. And up until the 13th century it was still possible to communicate with southern neighbors without much of issues.

Between 15th and 16th century Polish orthography forms; Stanisław Zaborowski and Jan Kochanowski tried to customize alphabet by introducing letters that would accurately reflected Polish phonology at that time - their alphabets proposals were really long.

Jumping to the Partitions period, where heavy russification aims at eradicating the Polish language and culture. There were attempts of introducing Cyrillic script but occupier's efforts eventually failed - Polish people stood up; literature of these times was full of titles exploring patriotism, love for homeland as a theme.

Linguistic reform of 1936 molds language to what we know today. The communistic period introduced second person plural within the public language, which naturally exists today in Czech and Slovak (vykání). Here it didn't lasted as it was unnatural and politically branded. While Polish language divides into dialects, that time also forms the standard Polish dialect, as post-WW2 migrations blurred the differences.

Today our language is heavily populated with borrowed words and terms from English, which in some case become "naturalized" - hater become hejter.

Re: The curious case of the disappearing Polish S (2015)

#89
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukraine absolutely must ditch Cyrillic alphabet, after the war. There will be plenty of things to change.

Yes. They have to change a lot of things to better align with Europe, especially if they join the EU. They're already working on moving to the European train gauge, they set Christmas to December 25th, etc. but there's still a long way to go.

Ukraine is in Europe. You mean, to better align with Germany?

Re: The curious case of the disappearing Polish S (2015)

#90
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes hear the same in my circles about Persian ditching the perso-arabic script. I don't get it, why can't you align a country however you like without creating a huge rift between a big population and years of literature, material etc etc? One can learn multiple scripts and almost all literate people know the latin script globally nowadays. Besides, sad to see the whole world just use the latin script in the…

Sharing a writing system helps with communication across cultures, even when there isn't a shared language. > One can learn multiple scripts and almost all literate people know the latin script globally nowadays. If almost all literate people know the latin script, there's a benefit to writing your language in it. Of course, the switching cost is high.

Latin script creates lot of confusion in mixed environments. For example, even native speakers of English language, major language of the world, have no clue how to read aloud random texts written using Latin alphabet.
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