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Very low hyphens in a monument
Posted by mili in
23 Apr 2008 — 1:17am
23 Apr 2008 — 1:17am
This is the text on a monument ("Keisarinnan kivi") commemorating the Russian Empress Alexandra's visit in 1833.
The hyphens in it are in an unusual place, never seen anything like this anywhere else.
PÄÄ-KAUPUNGISSA (nowadays we write it together without hyphen)
I suppose the months were treated like this to avoid repeating the word kuussa
Touko-kuussa
Kesä-kuussa
Was this the way to deal with hyphens in 1830's, or is this an odd one out?
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23 Apr 2008 — 3:04am
I’ve never seen a hyphen quite that low before, either.
Being Danish, I can understand why they wanted to avoid repeating the word kuussa, though.
23 Apr 2008 — 3:14am
Does "kuussa" mean something in Danish I don't want to know?
23 Apr 2008 — 3:50am
Well, not kuussa per se; but kusse (which any Dane will immediately think of when seeing the word) is the Danish equivalent of vittu, except coarser.
So probably yes.
23 Apr 2008 — 4:31am
Re to avoid repeating the word kuussa
Maybe the manufacturer charged per character, and they already had back luck with the year. Three triples in Roman numerals, that’s unfortunate. ;-)