The influence of spoken Polish on spelling in Internet fora

Based on misspellings of the letters ę, ą, often confused with combinations eN, oN, the article discusses the reasons why departures from standard orthography occur in entries by users of Internet fora. Discussions in the Internet are characterized by the informality and spontaneity typical for face-to-face verbal contacts, therefore their language is largely affected by the spoken variety of Polish. Mistakes arise out of disparities between spelling and pronunciation, as is demonstrated by a statistical analysis of examples like włosy bląd (instead of blond), kont (kąt), wzieli (wzięli), zaczą (zaczął), etc. It is important to distinguish between conscious and unconscious use of such forms. Some were deliberately spelled for stylistic reasons. Forms like oni widzo, oni chcom seen in texts written in dialect are simply a record of dialectal pronunciations, not misspellings. The article suggests a need for more research into Internet users’ spelling, to consider, among others, sociolinguistic factors.