Hi, Michelle wrote: > Thank you very much for your help. I'll have to pay close attention to > those words relating to times. I am very pleased that I got the names > right. Lagodka was not at www.herby.com. Lagoda was but the 'k' was so > clear that it had to be in there. Ah, but it is at www.herby.com.pl/indexslo.html. You have to search for ?AG?DKA, and you'll find it. Remember, when Russian has the characters corresponding to our LA-, which look like JIA-, it equates to Polish ŁA- (if that doesn't come through clearly, the first letter is the slash-L). Polish LA- corresponds to the letters that look like JI R with the R backwards. If these characters display properly, you'll see what I mean: Polish Lagodka = Лягодка Polish Łagodka = Лагодка Actually, the Polish name would usually be ŁAGÓDKA, pronounced roughly "wah-GOOT-kah," which Russians might spell ЛАГОДКА or ЛАГУДКА or even ЛАГУТКА. But if the Russian spelling begins with ЛА-, expect the Polish spelling to begin ŁA-. Similarly, Lublin is normally spelled Люблин when rendered in the Cyrillic alphabet, whereas ŁUPAK would be ЛУПАК. Polish LE- and ŁE- would typically both be rendered ЛЕ-, LI- would normally be ЛИ-, ŁY- = ЛЫ- (Polish can't have the letter combinations LY- or ŁI-), LO- and ŁO- = ЛО-. Some Polish letters are very easy to match up with their Cyrillic counterparts. Others are tricky. I'm afraid any combination of L- or Ł and a vowel needs extra attention. The use of wild cards at the Herby site can be very useful in dealing with these complications. Now, looking back over this note, I sure hope the foreign characters come through correctly, or it will be complete gibberish. I think I recall that you have a copy of _In Their Words ... Russian_, Michelle. If so, the info on pages 23-27 tries to make sense of all this. But the only way to get a really good grip on it is to learn the importance of palatalized consonants in the Slavic languages, and then become familiar with how Polish and Russian express them in their alphabets. Not exactly light reading! Fred Hoffman