With this article I want to show that the Russian and Polish orthographies, although very different, express almost the same set of phonemes. I hope that this will help you, dear reader, to read either of the languages better.

Comments, corrections and criticism are always welcome.

Phonemes

By "phoneme" I mean the smallest meaningful part of the sequence of sounds that make up a word. In this text, I will transcribe the phonemes that a written word (Russian or Polish) represents using Latin letters in [brackets]. (Although this is a common way to show pronunciation, I'm completely uninterested in pronunciation in this text, since that would get in the way of comparing Polish and Russian.)

Both Russian and Polish use "softened" consonants. I will indicate those with a subscript J in my transcriptions, for example НЬ = Ń = [nⱼ]. The difference in spelling of softened consonants between the two languages will be a central topic in the following.

Softening in Russian

In Russian, softened consonants are generally expressed in writing by a following "soft" vowel. The "hard" vowels А, О, У, Ы and Э correspond to the "soft" vowels Я, Ё, Ю, И and Е. If a softened consonant is not followed by a vowel, the so-called soft sign is used instead: Ь

E.g.: медь [mⱼedⱼ] "copper", лёд [lⱼod] "ice".

(In these two examples, the final sound is actually pronounced as T instead of D, because of the devoicing of final consonants that occurs in both Russian and Polish, but in the transcription I nevertheless use D, to follow the written form of the original word.)

If a soft vowel appears in the beginning of a word, or after another vowel, it represents the sound [j] instead of softening: ясный [jasnyj] "clear".

Some consonants (Ж, Ш, Ц) are never soft, and some (Ч, Щ) are always soft.

Softening in Polish

In Polish, softened consonants are in principle expressed by letters with diacritical marks: Ć, Ń, Ś, Ź. However, if the vowel "i" appears after the softened consonant, the mark is removed (since "i" by itself indicates softening), and if another vowel follows, an extra "i" is inserted between the consonant and the vowel. This can cause spelling differences in different conjugations of the same work, for example: koń [konⱼ] "horse", konia [konⱼa] "of a horse", koni [konⱼi] "of horses".

The hard correspondent to Ć is not C, but T. Therefore I will write the soft C as [tⱼ] in my transcriptions, e.g.: ciasto [tⱼasto] "cake".

The soft correspondent to D is written DŹ (but without the diacritical sign when it appears before a vowel, according to the rules above). E.g.: dziki [dⱼiki] "wild".

The consonant L is exceptional. It is written Ł when hard and L when soft. E.g.: las [lⱼas] "forest", głodny [glodny] "hungry".

The consonant R is also exceptional. It is written R when it is hard and RZ when it is soft. E.g.: ręka [ręka] "hand", rzeka [rⱼeka] "river". (Ą and Ę are Polish nasal vowels that Russian no longer has. I leave them as is in the transcriptions, but will go into further detail below.)

The reader will probably protest against some of the above pairings, and will rightly remark that L/Ł, R/RZ, S/Ś sound completely differently in Polish, but again I'd like to point out that I'm not interested in pronunciation; to compare Russian and Polish, these need to be treated as related phonemes.

Comparisons

Armed with this system for transforming written words from the two languages into a single transcription, we can to begin with notice that many words have the same phonemes (though not always the same meaning):

• кот = kot = [kot] "cat"
• конь = koń = [konⱼ] "horse"
• дети = dzieci = [dⱼetⱼi] "children"
• сеть = sieć = [sⱼetⱼ] "net"
• река = rzeka = [rⱼeka] "river"
• неделя "week" = niedziela "Sunday" = [nⱼedⱼelⱼa]

In some words we find a vowel change. Fairly often this is caused by the Old Slavic vowel Ѣ "yat", which in Russian became [ⱼe] but in Polish became either [ⱼa] or [ⱼe] depending on conjugation:

• белый [bⱼelyj] ≈ biały [bⱼaly] "white"
• лес [lⱼes] ≈ las [lⱼas] "forest"
• лесной [lⱼesnoj] ≈ leśny [lⱼesⱼny] "pertaining to (a) forest" (adjective)
• вера [vⱼera] ≈ wiara [vⱼara] "belief"
• место [mⱼesto] "place" ≈ miasto [mⱼasto] "city"

Sometimes Russian has an unstressed E where Polish has O:

• сестра [sⱼestra] ≈ siostra [sⱼostra] "sister"
• седло [sⱼedlo] ≈ siodło [sⱼodlo] "saddle"

The Polish nasal vowels Ą kaj Ę were originally written using the Cyrillic letters Ѫ "big yus" and Ѧ "little yus" (but in Polish those two sounds first collapsed into one and later separated again, such that it's not immediately obvious which of them was the original sound). In Russian, those sounds sometimes became [u], sometimes [ⱼa]:

• пять [pⱼatⱼ] ≈ pięć [pⱼętⱼ] "five"
• мясо [mⱼaso] ≈ mięso [mⱼęso] "meat"
• счастье [sĉⱼastje] ≈ szczęście [ŝĉęsⱼtⱼe] "happiness" (here [ⱼa] is written with А because of an orthographic rule)
• мука [muka] ≈ mąka [mąka] "flour"
• рука [ruka] ≈ ręka [ręka] "hand"
• мудрый [mudryj] ≈ mądry [mądry] "wise"
• буду [budu] ≈ będę [będę] "I will be"

In some cases Russian has [olo], [oro] or [ⱼerⱼe], while Polish lacks the first vowel:

• голос [golos] ≈ głos [glos] "voice"
• берег [bⱼerⱼeg] ≈ brzeg [brⱼeg] "coast"
• горох [goroĥ] ≈ groch [groĥ] "pea"
• молоко [moloko] ≈ mleko [mlⱼeko] "milk"

With this article I want to show that the Russian and Polish orthographies, although very different, express almost the same set of phonemes.

This article is intended as a gentle introduction to the UK tax system for immigrant workers. I've learnt a bit since I was "fresh of the boat", so I thought I'd share it in the hope that it be useful to someone. Any comments or feedback is welcome, of course ☺

In the following, I will assume that you have one and only one job, and that you get a monthly salary. Mutatur mutandis, caveat emptor, etc.

The basics

In the UK, tax is collected by a government agency called HMRC, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. If you're just a normal employee, your tax will be deducted from your salary payments before you even get the money through a scheme called Pay As You Earn (PAYE). The taxman is usually happy to keep the relationship at that level, but as you will see below it is sometimes to your advantage to get involved with them.

To the HMRC, you are just a number, specifically a National Insurance (NI) number. Your employer will ask you for your NI number when you start working. If you don't have one, just say so, and then try to get one as soon as possible.

While your tax will be deducted from your monthly salary, the amount of tax you pay is actually decided by your total income during the current tax year. The tax year runs from the 6th of April to the 5th of April the following year. During the tax year, you only pay tax on the part of your income that exceeds the personal allowance (£7,475 for 2011-12). You pay 20% of the amount that exceeds the personal allowance up to a certain limit (£35,000 for 2011-12), and a higher rate for the amount exceeding that limit.

On top of that, you pay a few percent of your salary for National Insurance contributions, which I won't cover in this article.

The tax code

Based on what they know about you, the HMRC assigns you a tax code, which is used by your employer to figure out how much tax to deduct from your salary. The tax code looks something like 747L. (If your tax code doesn't contain three digits and the letter L, you'd be better off reading the HMRC page than this article.) This means that your tax-free allowance for the year is £7,479 (replace the L with a 9), and that this should be deducted from your salary evenly across the year. (I'm aware that I said £7,475 above, but both numbers come from the HMRC web site, so the confusion is not my fault. And what is £4 between friends?…)

The HMRC should send you a letter notifying you about what tax code they have chosen, and you can also find it on every payslip.

Emergency tax codes

When the HMRC doesn't have enough information to assign the correct tax code, they give you something they call an emergency tax code. The name is misleading: there's nothing "emergency" about the tax code itself; in fact, it's quite likely that you will get the same tax code once your relations with HMRC have stabilised.

And this is the part where they take your money

You could probably see this coming: if you didn't start working at the beginning of the tax year (i.e., 6th of April), your Personal Allowance will make up a greater proportion of your salary than the HMRC thinks, and thus you should pay less tax each month. Of course, this isn't something the HMRC is eager to tell you.

For example, if your annual salary is £20,000 and you work during the entire tax year, your tax for the year would be £2,505:

(20,000 - 7,475) × 20% = 2,505

which is £208.75 per month. But if you started working in October, the personal allowance cancels out a greater part of your income:

(10,000 - 7,475) × 20% = 505

Split over six months, you should pay £42.08 per month. However, if you don't get your tax code right, you'd pay £208.75 per month, and as a result you would have overpaid £1,000 by the end of the tax year.

What you can do about it

Basically, you should write a letter to the HMRC and ask them to stop taking too much money, or to pay back the amount you have overpaid.

To find out where to send your letter, you first need to know your employer's taxpayer's reference. It might be indicated on your payslip, on your P60 form (see below), or you could ask your employer. Armed with that piece of knowledge, go to the [tax office finder][tax-office-finder] and type in the code, and you'll get the address of the tax office dealing with your tax.

During the tax year in question

In theory, the P46 form that you filled in when you started working should have saved you from all this trouble, as it gives the HMRC all the information they need to work out the correct tax code, but in practice you're not always that lucky. What you can do is ask the HMRC to give you a new tax code for the rest of the year, which would result in smaller tax deductions as they "pay back" by reducing future payments.

Always quote your National Insurance number, your employer's Taxpayer Reference, your address and your phone number in your letters.

After the tax year in question

Some time in April or May, your employer will give you a P60 form, which sums up your income and your tax payments during the previous tax year. This is very useful, since it contains all the information you need to claim back the overpaid tax. Use the formulas above to calculate how much tax you should have paid, and then write them a letter containing:

• your National Insurance number
• your employer's Taxpayer Reference
• the amount of tax you should have paid
• the amount of tax you actually paid
• the amount they owe you
• bank account details for repayment (sort code, account number, branch address)

Also enclose a copy of your P60 form.

You should get your refund within a few months, unless of course they manage to lose your request somehow, in which case you need to remind them.

This article is intended as a gentle introduction to the UK tax system for immigrant workers. I've learnt a bit since I was 'fresh of the boat', so I thought I'd share it in the hope that it be useful to someone.

Last weekend I was at the Language Show in London, mostly telling people about Esperanto at the stand of the Esperanto Association of Britain. (I had a lot of fun, of course, getting to tell people almost everything about my hobby.)

There were lots of exhibitors proposing various ways to learn various languages, but what stuck in my mind was the stand about Saaspel, a proposal for an alternative English orthography. Reforming their spelling system is something the English should have done a long time ago, as the pronunciation of a word generally has no relation to its spelling—which makes using the language harder for learners and native speakers alike. (The traditional spelling may have been a perfect fit for the language of Shakespeare's time, but is quite irrelevant now.)

Saaspel (or Sāspel, as written in its alternative form, with macrons to indicate long vowels) stands for "same sound—same spelling", which is a pretty good summary of how it works. Words are written as they are pronounced, with little (but still some) consideration given to their classical spelling. A few other rules and principles are:

• A "long vowel", pronounced as in the alphabet, is written "long", either "aa ee ii oo" or "ā ē ī ō", depending on your taste. "U" gets special treatment: "use" → "yuz", "boot" → "buut" or "būt".

• The vowels A, E, I and O, when short, generally correspond to the sound written with those letters in most continental European languages. For the same reason, "automatic" becomes "outomatic" but "sound" becomes "saund". Again, "U" gets special treatment and is used for the sound in "cut".

• "K" is not used except in proper names. The letter "C" always stands for the "K" sound, never for "S".

• Voiced "th", as in "this", is written "th", but voiceless "th", as in "thin", becomes "tt".

• Often a consonant is enough for an entire syllable: "silabl" (syllable), "endd" (ended), "problm" (problem).

See their web site for more.

Though I'm not convinced that Saaspel is the perfect way to fix English spelling, I feel that it is a decent implementation of a good idea, so I'll try using it and see if I can make someone happy with it. (Ideally my effort would make the entire world adopt it, but if I can give at least one fellow human that warm fuzzy feeling of something done right, it's totally worth it.)

How I found out about Saaspel…

From time to time I write an Emacs function that I believe others might find useful as well. I then try to post it on identi.ca, which requires me to trim it down to 140 characters minus the Emacs group tag. (The hardest part of that is that (Emacs) Lisp function and variable names tend to be long and descriptive, by the way.) Here are the ones I've posted so far, with comments and slightly improved formatting.

Save old buffer contents when reverting

This will save your life, or at least pieces of work that you put your soul in, at least once. Before a buffer is reverted, it puts a copy in the kill ring, so you can get it back with C-y. I found this especially useful with vc-mode, where updating a file to whatever version would perform a revert.

This takes up some memory, of course, though I haven't noticed that becoming a problem.

(add-hook 'before-revert-hook
  (lambda ()
    (kill-new (buffer-string))
    (message "Previous buffer text saved to kill ring")))

First posted here.

Delete processes with an interactive command

The Emacs function delete-process is not interactive, which means that you have to use M-: and type some magic to kill a certain "process" (which in Emacs might be either a shell command or a network connection). Here is a function that lets you choose the process to delete with tab completion:

(defun delete-process-i(p)
  (interactive `(,(completing-read"Kill proc: "
    (mapcar 'process-name(process-list))()t)))
  (delete-process p))

This one suffered the most from compression. The name was supposed to be delete-process-interactive, but that was the first thing to go. I also found that () is a handy alias for nil, especially as it doesn't require spaces around it.

First posted here.

Get track info in EMMS playlist buffer

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that there is a music player for Emacs. Well, probably more than one, but the one I use is EMMS, the Emacs Multimedia System.

Skipping ahead a bit, suddenly you're in the playlist buffer with a track that's being displayed only with its filename, instead of name, artist, album etc. EMMS is supposed to go through the playlist and get that information for each track, but sometimes you need to prod it. Thus this function, which forces EMMS to reread information for the track at point:

(defun my-emms-get-info()
  (interactive)
  (let(emms-info-auto-update)
    (emms-info-really-initialize-track(emms-playlist-track-at))))

First posted here.

Change Eshell working directory

For running shell commands within Emacs I prefer Eshell to the alternatives (M-x shell and M-x term). Eshell is implemented in Emacs Lisp, and in my experience the friction between the editor and the shell is lesser than when running Bash in an Emacs buffer.

If Eshell hasn't been started yet, M-x eshell starts it in the current buffer's current directory. If Eshell has been started already, M-x eshell jumps to the Eshell buffer without changing directory. I wanted something better and ended up with ecd: it prompts for a directory, defaulting to the directory of the current buffer, and starts Eshell if needed and switches to the directory you specify. (For extra enlightenment, use ido-mode when selecting the directory.)

(defun ecd (d)
  (interactive
   (list (expand-file-name (read-directory-name "cd: " nil nil t))))
  (eshell)
  (eshell/cd d))

(Actually it always starts Eshell. I found during "compression" that it doesn't matter.)

First posted here.

From time to time I write an Emacs function that I believe others might find useful as well.

The UK Border Agency offers you the opportunity to find out what they know about you, by a so-called Subject Access Request (SAR), for the bargain price of £10. I was just too curious to resist…

And about a month after sending my request, I got a big envelope with lots of papers in it. There were all the forms I sent them, all the letters where we haggled about when I would send them my passport, and some screenshots of a Windows-based database application showing pretty much the same information I wrote in the forms, and my photo.

I must say that I expected them to send records of every time I entered or left the UK, so I'm a bit disappointed. (Are my travel habits so boring to them?) It would have been rather convenient, to have an authoritative place to look up in what country I was at a certain date. I guess I should be happy that their surveillance is limited…

The UK Border Agency offers you the opportunity to find out what they know about you, by a so-called Subject Access Request (SAR), for the bargain price of £10. I was just too curious to resist…