No Georgians or Armenians goed to the blog?

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2006/05/28 03:01 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2006/05/28/608931.aspx

As I somewhat intentionally attempted to apply a rule-based process for genitive forms of month names, I may not fit the ideal model of the young child who says things because they don't know any better. But I thought some kind native speaker of one of the languages would reply back with either the more complex rule(s) or the specific exception(s) to cover the data.

I guess I took it for granted that someone who knows one of the lanuages would be one of the blog's readers; I guess I sort of it take it for granted that there is enough of a following here, especially when people tell me about whole communities of people who are readers (I was recently told that I am widely read by software developers in Japan, for example --something I never would have believed).

There could of course be people who are not wanting to directly contribute to Microsoft software.

And it would be foolish of me to claim that I wouldn't be interested in adding new data if feedback comes in that makes it through the review process, since it would be a lie -- I would like to improve what the products I have any influence on do, and that would be true no matter where I happen to be working. That is just a part of wanting to properly support language and culture in the products.

Though of course this is not the sort of feature that would impact the price of Windows, or even the marketing of it (can you imagine seeing Now Including Genitive Month Names! on the actual box of Windows sold in Armenia?!?). For the most part it is a feature that people would simply not notice -- just as we never notice when language is correct, compared to when it is not.

So, if any Georgians or Armenians are out there reading this, do you have light to shed on my "suppositions of a young child" about the genitive forms of month names in Georgian and Armenian?

And if you want you can even tell people that you goed to the blog and corrected me on my grammar mistakes! :-)

This post brought to you by "Շ" (U+0547, a.k.a. ARMENIAN CAPITAL LETTER SHA)

.
English

January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
Armenian

Hounvar
Petrvar
Mart
April
Mayis
Hoonis
Hoolis
Ogostos
September
Hoktember
Noyember
Degdember

for genitive just add i(e) at the end.
eg. mart >> marti >> read it as marte

Regular month names

հունվար
փետրվար
մարտ
ապրիլ
մայիս
հունիս
հուլիս
օգոստոս
սեպտեմբեր
հոկտեմբեր
նոյեմբեր
դեկտեմբեր

Genitive

հունվարի
փետրվարի
մարտի
ապրիլի
մայիսի
հունիսի
հուլիսի
օգոստոսի
սեպտեմբերի
հոկտեմբերի
նոյեմբերի
դեկտեմբերի

but it's not necesserally for all nouns
sometimes words also change eg
երկինք-երկնքի (sky - of sky)(what happened to the inner ի? i'm not an expert but that's the way it is)

or more importantly

ուրախություն - ուրախության (happiness - of happiness) (changes from tyun to ...tyan NOT ...tyuni)

good luck.

Wow Robert -- a lot of those names are different from the ones that are built into Windows today, even. I wonder what the cause of that difference is -- any thoughts?

Thanks for your response, in any case, and I will follow-up on this side as well....

i'm not sure, since i don't have the armeinan version.

but what you have here
http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/archive/2006/04/08/571353.aspx

Հունվարի
Փետրվարի
Մարտի
Ապրիլի
Մայիսի
Հունիսի
Հուլիսի
Օգոստոսի
Սեպտեմբերի
Հոկտեմբերի
Նոյեմբերի
Դեկտեմբերի

is correct as far as the months go.

changes from
...թյուն - ...թյան
are also very common.

If you have any q's just ask.

Hey, no need for you to be sorry -- if I had looked closer at the letters I would have seen that, too!

For some locales, uppercase vs lowercase day and month names are a real issue to think about, come to think of it....

Oh, just to comment Roberts reply... In case of "yerkink" - sky, the inner i transforms to a silent @ (don't have a keyboard). It's not being written if the word is not hyphenated. If the word is hyphenated, then the silent @ should appear on the first line - attached to the sylable that remains on the line.

There's difference between eastern and wester armenian where there are numerous differences during spelling &/or during pronounciation. Mosty letters b & p are interchanged Eg. In easter Armenian(Mostly spocen in the Republic of Armenia) you'd write April whereas in western Armenian(mostly spoken in diaspora) you'd say Abril.