• vaionko@sopuli.xyz
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    20 days ago

    This makes it horrible to read. An example that comes to mind is a Finnish athlete with the last name Määttä. If it was Maatta, it would be pronounced differently but still understandable if you knew the person. But it was translated into Maeaettae which is just horrible

    • siipale@sopuli.xyz
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      17 hours ago

      Finnish doesn’t have umlauts. Characters ä and ö are entirely different and separate from a and o so it doesn’t make sense to add the letter e signifying a-umlaut or o-umlaut when writing in Finnish. German has umlauts so it makes sense to write either ä or ae when writing in German.

      I agree it’s best to write Maatta if letter ä is not available. I suppose the vocal harmony makes it easy to distinguish whether a is supposed to be a or ä and if o is supposed to be o or ö.