From: jarkko.hietaniemi@nokia.com
Date: Tue Jul 08 2003 - 03:45:24 EDT
> > Don't call me Mr. Roberts is my name.
> >
> > Don't call me Mr. Roberts is my name.
>
> In European English Mr is generally not followed by a full stop,
> because the abbreviation contains the first and last letter of the
> word. (In Finland that would be M:r.)
Ummm...? No.
Abbreviations in Finnish are formed either with a final ".", if the abbreviated words
are "untouched", e.g. "em." for "edellä mainittu" (abovementioned), or with an intra-":"
if the abbreviation is inflected, e.g. "esim:iin" for "esimerkkiin" (to the example) --
the ":" separates the inflectional root of the abbreviaton (here: "esimerkki-") and the
inflectional suffix. There are exceptions and details to these rules, of course, such as
quite often the final "." is left out, e.g. "kpl" for "kappale" (piece(s)), when the
proper abbreviation would be "kpl.".
But none of these rules apply for foreign words. In this particular case we would either
use the "Mr" or "Mr." as-is as a foreign word, or translate it to Finnish, either as "herra"
or its abbrevation "hra".
>
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