Polish diacritics are deeply embedded in the national soul. Without them, we'd have to do without hard-hitting words like "żółć" (bile), "rozeźlony" (enraged), or "łazić" (to wander) 😢. It's truly an irreparable loss when technicalities – like the absence of Polish characters in SMS messages – prevent us from writing everything that comes to mind. No more! Below, we explain how to set up Polish characters on your phone's keyboard, why it's worth doing at all, and whether every device is imbued with the magic of the Polish language.
Why bother writing "in Polish"?
Using Polish characters in SMS messages is important for several reasons.
- Firstly, it helps in correctly conveying the meaning of the message. Polish diacritics, such as ą, ę, ś, ć, ż, ź, ó, ł, play a crucial role in the Polish language, differentiating words that might otherwise be confused (oh, that unfortunate "łaska" [grace/favor] 🙃).
- Secondly, using Polish characters demonstrates respect for the recipient, indicating that time has been taken to write the text correctly.
- Thirdly, we often write SMS messages in a business context, and correctly constructed messages are simply good practice, showing our professionalism and attention to detail. The days of sloppy work in this regard are gone forever.
Setting up Polish characters in SMS
If:
- you value the linguistic accuracy of your SMS messages
or
- you are a linguistic purist
or even if
- you're afraid that a grammar nazi is lurking on the other end of the message, ready to point out every slip-up,
then you'll certainly want to set up Polish characters on your mobile phone 🤘.
One way to make them appear in SMS messages is to check if Polish is set as the default language on your phone. To check the global system language setting, go to your phone's general settings, then navigate to "General management," and check the "Language" tab. If it's different from Polish, then... you know what to do with your little fingers.
Okay, great, but don't pop the champagne just yet, Viking! The voyage isn't over.
How to enable Polish characters — next step
If setting the global language to Polish didn't yield positive results, then... tough luck.
Did you believe that? Nah. That joke's worth a farthing! Of course, it'll be fine, just like our prepaid offer is great.
If we're talking about an Android phone, you need to check the default character encoding in the settings of your keyboard or messaging app. The names of these settings vary. Sometimes it will be referred to as "shortening tails," and in other cases, it will be "dropping unicode," "dropping uncoded characters," or such nonsense as "sending compact messages." If you find any of these in your settings, you should turn them off, obliterate them, close them, and forget about them.
You can also find keyboard settings in your phone's general settings by going to "General management." Here, you'll find "Samsung Keyboard," and you should also set the Polish language there and potentially disable the aforementioned unnecessary options.
And what about iOS? Here, traditionally, it has to be a little different. :)
Polish characters in SMS on iOS
Do you hold the popular "apple" 🍏 in your strong Viking hands? Wealth has blown into our sails! In this case, to implement Polish characters in your writing, you need to go to keyboard settings and add a keyboard that supports diacritics. Soon after, magic will happen, and through the magic keyboard options, typing Polish characters on your iPhone will become possible. Note that the art of using Polish characters, according to our allies across the Ocean, borders on magic 🪄.
Setting up Polish characters on a phone bought abroad
Vikings, like sailors, seek opportunities, travel a lot, and bring back plenty of spoils from these voyages. If you've also happened to bring back an electronic trophy from your overseas or land escapades, we hope you acquired it in a different way than historical Vikings did 😁.
When, on native soil, you hear Chopin's nocturne (while waiting for a call from the clinic's registration), you'll yearn for those swirls above the 'a' and 'e' and the little lines above 's' and 'z'. And you'll know that on your acquired phone, you desperately want to use your native language when texting. Whatever your inspiration for changing language settings to your native tongue, the procedure will be the same as for a phone bought in Poland.
ATTENTION! This applies to phones purchased from European distribution. Only then can you be sure that Polish will be among the available languages. In the case of phones bought in Asia or the USA, and sometimes even in the UK, we don't have such a guarantee. This is due to local legislation and different standards regarding technical settings or transmission infrastructure. Attempting to install different software can even prove disastrous and block your smartphone. When buying a phone abroad, it's therefore worth making sure that it has Polish language available in its settings 👌.
