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Locale packs for Alexandre Dumas fils and Jiří Dienstbier ml.: generational words that collide outside their language #684
Description
#661 and #679 added junior/senior words for 45 languages to the default suffix vocabulary. Four real, standard forms were left out, because each collides with a name or word in other languages written in the same Latin script:
| Words | Language | Collision |
|---|---|---|
fils / père |
fr | Fils is a surname (767 US Census bearers): Marie Fils would lose her family name |
ml. |
cs, sk, sl, hr | a bare trailing ML (initials) would read as a suffix |
st. |
cs, sk, sl | St. is Saint, already a title and an ambiguous particle |
A locale pack is where a word goes when its claim is only safe once the caller has declared the language (the #604 nic precedent; mechanisms.md#LOCALE-PACKS-PURE-DATA). In a parse the caller has declared French, Dumas fils is unambiguous.
Proposal: a locales.FR pack adding fils/père, and one Central European pack (or CS/SK/SL/HR packs) adding ml., and st. if the St. overlap can be settled. Each needs its docstring's declared deviations, a DEVIATES predicate, and test rows.
Open questions:
- Does
st.belong even in a pack?Jiří Dienstbier st.is standard Czech, but a pack can only add vocabulary, andstis already a title and a particle. - One pack per language, or one regional pack? The words are shared across cs/sk/sl/hr.
- Are two words enough to justify a pack's own surface, or should this wait for the v3 pack work?
Recorded in decisions.md#generational-words.
Activity
Read junior and senior in 34 more languages; let any suffix word star…
Add docs/design/vocabulary-model-rfc.md, where the vocabulary model i…
Add docs/design/vocabulary-model-rfc.md, where the vocabulary model i…
Add docs/design/vocabulary-model-rfc.md, where the vocabulary model i…
derek73 commentedon Oct 31, 2026
Status:
ml.andst.are read bylocales.CS,locales.SK,locales.SLandlocales.HR(3.0's sub-phase 3f, Add the Czech, Slovak, Slovenian and Croatian packs (3.0, 3f) #957):parser_for(locales.CS).parse("Jiří Dienstbier ml.")gives suffixml..filsreads by default, gated by the word count and case (rules/S11, phase 2h):Alexandre Dumas filsgives suffixfils, whileMarie Filskeeps her family name.Still open here (#971 narrows the decisions file's
Open:line to match):père, which sits infr.tomlas a reading off by default, waiting for a French pack.Narrow the Open lines for #345 and #684 to what 3.0's packs left (#971)