GNU bug report logs - #3450
23.0.91; HELLO file: Finnish name for language is "suomi"

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Message #15 received at 3450 <at> emacsbugs.donarmstrong.com (full text, mbox):

From: Teemu Likonen <tlikonen <at> iki.fi>
To: Kenichi Handa <handa <at> m17n.org>
Cc: 3450 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#3450: 23.0.91; HELLO file: Finnish name for language is "suomi"
Date: Wed, 03 Jun 2009 07:49:42 +0300

On 2009-06-03 09:42 (+0900), Kenichi Handa wrote:

> Thank you. We'll fix "suomi". But for "hyvää", I'm not sure. That part
> is not a normal setence but is a listing of words saying hello, and
> "," is just a separator of each independent item.

With a comma (,) the most obvious Finnish interpretation is that they
belong to the same sentence. Comma is just a natural Finnish separator
for the greeting ("Hei") and other syntactic content. I understand that
one could say that the HELLO file does not list sentences in different
languages and that the comma is meant to be higher-level separator of
items. But does this meaning reach a human reader? I'd say "no" because
there is already a higher-level separator in each line, namely the tab
cells with the width of 32 characters.

This issue is not something I'd go fighting for too seriously. I'll just
say that I think most Finnish people see that line as a single sentence.

> If that file is written in <TABLE> of HTML, perhaps we'll format it as
> this:
>
> <TR><TD>Finnish</TD><TD>suomi</TD><TD>Hei</TD><TD>Hyvää päivää</TD></TR>
>
> Should we downcase "Hyvää" in that case?

In such context it's quite free. You could write them all small letters
or capitalize only the first letter of item in a table cell, like:

    Finnish     suomi       hei         hyvää päivää

or

    Finnish     suomi       Hei         Hyvää päivää

Just choose the one that fits to the general picture. :-)

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