Ben:

The two largest North American Bakers/Importers of wafers
both have chosen OPLATKI as their spelling.

I think to a degree that due to there being more Poles in
North America than Slovaks or Lithuanians this was a
factor in their decision to use this spelling.

It's also interesting that when it comes to wafers one of
these importers use wafers made in Slovakia, exported to
Poland and then imported once again to America as Polish
Oplatky.

Greg


--- In Slovak-World@yahoogroups.com, Ben Sorensen <cerrunos1@...> wrote:
>
> Good points Martin! I actually meant that to begin an answer to Greg's
question/idea...
> The counts, due to the commercial nature of Google and other search engines,
may give us an idea of which word is in more use commercially- for example
iarelative.com hits twice on the first page of results for oplatky- but would
not be by any means conclusive.  For research and business, the results will be
all but meaningless, but it plants a seed of wanting to sift through
it- maybe. 
> Google and other search engines- and the internet altogether- have some
serious shortcomings. If I try to look up Jan Nosal, Jozo Rybar, Jozef Libjak,
or Peter Paciga, I am almost certain to NOT find my fujara idols. A search of
fujara did not yield one maker in the first two pages, when I know for certain
that they have web pages nowadays. I bet oplatky/oblatky would be just as
informative! However, 220,000 hits were gathered. How many of those fujara hits
have to do with the flute? I really can't begin to tell you. Is this
information good for anything, really? Absolutely not. :-P
> I threw it out there- 'cause it was there.
> Is this why you work at a respected university and are a foremost expert in
your area, and I take angry phonecalls from people who have forgotten that they
CAN live without thier phones? You betcha! :-D
> Ben
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: votrubam <votrubam@...>
> To: Slovak-World@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Fri, November 6, 2009 2:46:00 AM
> Subject: [Slovak-World] Re: Oblatky/oplatky
>
>  
> > for oblatky. (0.38 seconds) 
> > for oplatky. (0.24 seconds)
>
> Well, what languages do we search when we just type things in ggl.cm, how many
languages have the word oplatky, what diacritics did we type in, how does ggl.cm
aggregate, or not, the inflected forms (5 oblatok, oblatkami), etc. In other
words, what's supposed to be the value of typing oblatky and oplatky in ggl,
what is it supposed to tell us? Sure, how many times ggl counted that exact
sequence of letters in who knows how many languages. So what of it? Could it
possibly tell us anything about the use of the words in Slovak, which was
Helen's question?
>
> So type in and let ggl count, e.g., the words mraz and mroz and go over a few
dozen pages of the results -- skip thousands of pages each time to avoid ggl's
propensity to accumulate English at the top. What can the sum total possibly
tell us about the words themselves, in what languages they exist, with what
diacritics, in what meanings, how often they are used in each of them?
>
> Martin
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>