This reminds me of when the so called Scandinavian letters of the Finnish alphabet (esp. ä & ö) were replaced by ae and oe in e.g. sports broadcasts. For instance Väätäinen (fairly common name in Finland a fairly good long distance runner in the seventies - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juha_V%C3% ... %C3%A4inen) became Vaeaetaeinen

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What is your opinion here?

IMHO it would be better to write “Vaatainen” instead, though I’d certainy advise any people working with or for me to write it correctly as “Väätäinen”.

Reminds me of a cutout from a magazine or newspaper that I had pinned on the wall next to my desk some 25 yrs ago, with the name of a Finnish town: “Kürpälääibäüxikaxi” (is this correct? Did it from my fading memory.)


Greetz, Töm

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If ä is not available, I would definitely choose a over ae, IMHO Vaatainen is much better than Vaeaetaeinen.

Your town name is not correct. Firstly, there is no ü in Finnish, and x is very rarely used, and never in local names (only in words that come directly from other languages). Also b is extremely rare in town/willage names (I cant think of any right now, but I wouldn't say there are none). If you make some changes you get Kyrpälääipäyksikaksi, which starts to look like a Finnish word (but is not). "Kyrpä" is a rude word meaning penis, and "lä" is a common ending in village names, so Kyrpälä could be an attempted humorous village name. In the end "yksi" = one and "kaksi" = two. The "äipä" in the middle makes no sense in Finnish. I suspect that the original name has been a fictional one, in addition to which you don't remember it exactly right.

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As a non-native speaker, I don't quite follow your reasoning when you say that if an article is present the adjectives use the accusative form and that-en is not the dative form. The accusative form of adjectives only ends in -en if the noun is masculine: Ich mag diesen frischen Salat(m), aber nicht diese dünne Suppe(f) und dieses warme Bier(n) and this differs from the dative endings of the adjectives if a der or ein word is present: Ich ging mit meinem guten Freund(m), seiner hübschen Freundin(f) und ihrem dämlichen Söhnchen(n) ins Restaurant. When no article is present, adjectives take the strong endings: Frischer Salat(m) schmeckt gut, dünne Suppe(f) und warmes Bier(n) aber nicht.

The way I learned it was that there are two types of limiting words, the der words (der, dieser, jeder, welcher) and the ein words (ein, kein and all possessive adjectives) These words take either strong endings, or in 3 cases, no endings (masculine and neuter ein words in the nominative and neuter, and neuter ein words in the accusative)*. The adjectives that follow limiting words then take weak endings unless the limiting word has no ending, in which case the adjective takes a strong ending, for example: Dein ehemaliger Freund(nom. m) war ein kleines Männchen(nom. n) das kein helles Bier(acc. n) mochte.

The strong endings are:


The weak endings are:


If this seems like too much, there's always the option of chucking the German SO for a Dutch one, and then the only thing to figure out as far as adjective endings go is when to add -e. :p

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Well, it's too much of a stretch, I guess.

pseudo-Deutsch - Süddeutsch, with an English pronunciation of the Greek pseudo and the German Süd. Just something that came to mind when I wrote pseudo-Deutsch.

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As so often the native speaker doesn't know the rules. your explanation is of course right.

I simply wanted to point out that the explanation given in the only answer to the original question was despite the length of the thread not correct. ("the dative form for adjectives is always -en" - no, it isn't.)