>For now, I think I will ask my relative to use the (~) after the diacritic and I will figure it out from there. Does anyone > >think this would this be a difficult or rude request? For the native speakers, it would take a considerable effort to accommodate you. The concept of adding ~ after the diactrical letter does not exist among Polish speaking people, and it is not a natural writing/reading style. Most of us read/write automatically in our native languages without giving much thought to the process itself. What you would be asking them goes against the grain, so to speak. It feels weird, it looks weird and it is not a part of a Polish language at all. It is a common practice among Poles to use plain letters with no diactrical marks, when for whatever reason, they cannot use the proper letters. Any Polish speaking person would understand it perfectly. Nobody would ever use ~. If one wants to see/write all diactrical marks in Polish (or other non-English language), it is easy enough to set up one's computer to display/write them. Also, most common email programs - like MS Outlook, for example, or the on-line ones like hotmail, gmail or yahoo - do support international character encodings. No need for ~. Ever. Cheers. Ella