# quoted foreign words: inflection



## Gavril

Päivääpä,

If you are using a foreign word in quotation marks, is this word usually inflected when the syntax calls for it?

For example,

1.
A: _Mitä tarkoittaa englannin "shiftless"?_
B: _Se tarkoittaa "velttoa". Esimerkiksi, jos joku istuu koko päivän sohvalla eikä ajattele työn hakemisesta, häntä pidetään "shiftless"-ina[?]._

2. (in the context of talking about an election in the United States: )
_Vaalien lähestyessä yhtä ehdokasta alettiin nimitellä "shrimp"-iksi[?] eli rääpäleeksi._


Or, would it be more normal to rephrase these sentences so that there was no need to inflect the quoted word? For example,

1. _... häntä kuvataan sanalla "shiftless"_
2. _... yhtä ehdokasta alettiin nimitellä sanalla "shrimp" eli "rääpäle"_

Kiitos ajastanne


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## fennofiili

A foreign word is inflected if the sentence context requires an inflected form. The inflected word as a whole is written inside quotation marks if such marks are used, or written in italic if italic is used, e.g. ”shiftlessinä” or _shiftlessinä_.

The suffix follows normal vowel harmony rules, except that usually “visual” harmony is used, rather illogically I’d say; “James” is usually inflected in writing as “Jamesilla” etc. and not “Jamesillä”, even though the pronounced vowel of the suffix is “ä”.

You may encounter expressions like ”shiftless”inä where the suffix (and the binding vowel i) is placed after the closing quote, but they are substandard.

Writing ”shiftlessinä” sounds slightly odd to me, and I would probably reformulate it as in your example. But inflecting foreign nouns does not sound, so I would say _nimitellä "shrimpiksi"_, since _nimitellä sanalla ”shrimp”_, though surely possible, sounds somewhat artificial unless you wish to focus on the idea of using a particular *word*.


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## Gavril

One other question: what if there is a foreign phrase in quotes? How would it normally be inflected?

E.g.,

_Jo peliuransa aikana häntä alettiin nimittää "the Great One"-iksi[?] eli kaikkien aikojen suurimmaksi._


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## fennofiili

The principle is the same: the case suffix is part of the word and therefore goes inside quotation marks: _häntä alettiin nimittää "the Great Oneksi”

_The spelling is _Oneksi_, even though the pronunciation replaces the mute _e_ by _i _as the the binding vowel _i _([waniksi]).


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## Gavril

In the last thread, Fennofiili wrote (in recommending which words to use in a Finnish -> English translation):



> Pikemminkin ”same thing as a parameter of the method link_to”, tai ehkä  ”to” pro ”of”



Would it have been equally correct to write "tai ehkä 'to' 'of':in sijaan" here?


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## fennofiili

Gavril said:


> Would it have been equally correct to write "tai ehkä 'to' 'of':in sijaan" here?



Not quite. A colon is not used in the inflection of foreign words, only in the inflection of abbreviations, e.g. _esim:n_ (= _esimerkin_) and _EU:n_ (_Euroopan unionin_). Under some conditions, an apostrophe can be be used to separate a foreign word from the suffix, e.g._ Bordeaux’ssa_. An apostrophe may be used for clarity in exceptional situations like _Sinise’n_ (to clarify that the name is _Sinise_, not _Sininen_). It is debatable whether we could write _of’in_ (the rules are somewhat vague).

Anyway, _tai ehkä ”to” ”of’in” sijaan_ would look colloquial to my eyes. We surely speak that way, but it does not look adequate in formal text. A support noun (tukisubstantiivi) would normally be used, e.g. _tai ehkä to-sana of-sanan sijaan_ or _tai ehkä sana ”to” sanan ”of” sijaan._

My wording _tai ehkä ”to” pro ”of” _probably isn’t good style, but I used because on this forum people know the word _pro _in such usage. I wouldn’t use it e.g. in a newspaper article. We have some foreign prepositions that are convenient to use in contexts where inflection might look awkward—Finnish prepositions and postpositions always require the associated noun to be in some inflected case. I think the foreign prepositions can be listed as_ à, contra, pro, versus_ (or _vs._), but I may have missed some. And I guess they cannot be recommended for general use; they are more like technical jargon.


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