Re: [libreoffice-l10n] [ANNOUNCE] added possessive genitive case month names, HEADS UP localizers ; -)

On Sunday 20 November 2011, Eike Rathke wrote:
> On Saturday, 2011-11-19 22:12:50 +0200, Harri Pitkänen wrote:
> > Similar problem with Finnish. We need to use genitive or partitive
> > depending on whether the month name comes before or after the day of
> > month. So you can write the date for today either as
> >
> >   "marraskuun 19. 2011" (genitive) or
> >   "19. marraskuuta 2011" (partitive)
>
> Does this mean that Finnish actually uses three forms of month names,
> nominative, genitive and partitive? fi_FI.xml contains "marraskuu" for
> November, so it looks like.

Yes. Or more precisely we have 14 forms for month names but these three are 
the ones that are actually used in date expressions.

> Hmm.. I could add also a partitive form to locale data and use that in
> the number formatter. Is the rule simply always that if the day precedes
> the month the genitive is used, and if the day follows the month the
> partitive is used?

Well the genitive and partitive need to be swapped here but othewise, yes. So 
the complete rule looks like this:

- If there is no day of month in the format, use nominative form for the 
month.
- If the day is before month, use partitive form for the month.
- Otherwise (that is, if the day is after month) use genitive form.

These rules are valid even if there are additional words between the day and 
month.

Here are some real word examples of valid Finnish date formats:

  MMMM            -> use nominative for MMMM
  MMMM YYYY       -> use nominative for MMMM
  D. MMMM YYYY    -> use partitive for MMMM
  D. "päivä" MMMM -> use partitive for MMMM
  MMMM D. YYYY    -> use genitive for MMMM
  MMMM D.         -> use genitive for MMMM
  MMMM D. "päivä" -> use genitive for MMMM

> I could get that in quite easily if the rule is simply what I assumed
> above.

It should be as simple as that and definitely a great feature for us. Has 
anyone checked how this affects interoperability with Excel? I have no idea 
how Excel handles date formats in localized versions but I could try to find 
someone with Finnish version of Excel to do some testing.

Harri

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