Hi Juozas,
The question you raise is most interesting. People have never accepted
borders, have they? With Polish folks in Lithuania, what actually
happens to either of their languages? And aren't there any Lithuanian
folks in Poland? Seems to me there should be.

My paternal grandmother spoke Lithuanian and understood Polish but would
never speak Polish around my Polish speaking mother. Instead, she would
speak to my father (and mother) in Lithuanian, a language my mother
barely understood. That story has always fascinated me -- especially
since I'm quite sure my mother could get the gist of what the
conversation was.

Are the Polish and Lithuanian spoken languages really that different?
And what about the written languages? Do both languages use the same
alphabet?

Thank you in advance.
Gerry

Juozas Rimas wrote:
>
> I'm sorry that some of my thoughts were based exclusively on
> practical observation and looked like politically incorrect. Indeed I
> really didn't mean to offend anyone. When asking Piotr about the
> people of Polish decent in the South-Eastern Lithuania, I was hoping
> he has devoted some time in the past to phonologically analyze the
> language spoken in the region (I wondered if the language could be
> really called Polish, with no offence intended; from what I've
> practically heard - I'm incompetent in theory: that's why I'm
> participating in this interesting list - it could not). As to the
> depalatalized dental stops in Russian, I thank Sergey that he didn't
> limit himself with justly criticizing my poor choice of terms
> (inevitable due to my incompetency) and provided some very valuable
> information about the subject (something I actually aimed at by
> writing the initial message, unfortunately, with some bad
> connotations that should've been avoided). Thanks again and I'll
> proof-read my messages in the future.
>
> Juozas Rimas