[PATCH] Declension of month names in dates

[Jacob Sparre Andersen]

Jacek Stolarczyk wrote:

> Current framework does not allow to write a proper date
> in long format in many languages.

Agreed.

> 1) adds the ability to specify whether you want
>    possessive forms of month names in dates ("of
>    January" instead of "January"). In many languages
>    (like Polish and Czech) it cannot be done even by
>    concatenating "of" and month name

This is all good and fine, but considering that there is a
much larger variation in the declension of dates, day names
and month names, a more general system might be in order.

In Faroese todays date can be written "fríggjadagin 16.
august" or "fríggjadagur 16. august" depending on the
grammatical context. And then the day name may have to be
capitalised in case it is the first word in a sentence.

So as I see it, we ought to devise a system that allows
multiple forms of day, week (in case anybody uses that) and
month names. And maybe also multiple predefined complete
date forms which of course refer to the appropriate forms of
the day, week and month names.

In Faroese we would use four forms for day names (hvørfall,
hvørfall við stórum, hvønnfall, hvønnfall við stórum), none
for week names and two for month names (hvørfall, hvørfall
við stórum). And then we would compose four complete date
forms using these (with apologies for the syntax):

   <day of week.hvønnfall> <day of month>. <month.hvørfall>
   <day of week.hvørfall> <day of month>. <month.hvørfall>
   <day of week.hvønnfall við stórum> <day of month>. <month.hvørfall>
   <day of week.hvørfall við stórum> <day of month>. <month.hvørfall>

Corresponding to these four forms of todays date:

   fríggjadagin 16. august
   fríggjadagur 16. august
   Fríggjadagin 16. august
   Fríggjadagur 16. august

(and now I hope I didn't overlook something)

Some questions we have to answer:

 a) Are there any languages where the above isn't
    sufficient?

 b) Are there any features in the above, which will not be
    used at all?

Greetings,

Jacob
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