Taivutuslyhenne

Taivutuslyhenne refers to a type of abbreviation in Finnish where a word is shortened and then inflected. This is distinct from a standard abbreviation where the shortened form remains uninflected. In taivutuslyhenne, the final letter of the shortened word is often dropped, and suffixes are appended directly to the stem.

For example, the word "esimerkiksi" (for example) can be abbreviated to "esim.". However, if one wishes to use it in a genitive case, instead of forming the genitive of "esim." which would be grammatically awkward, a taivutuslyhenne is formed. This might involve shortening "esimerkiksi" to "esim" and then adding the genitive suffix, resulting in "esimerkin" if it were a full word, or in practice, the shortened form may be conjugated. A common taivutuslyhenne is "s." for "sivu" (page), which can be inflected, for instance, "sivulla" (on the page) becomes "s.:lla".

The use of taivutuslyhenne is common in informal writing and some technical contexts to save space. However, it is generally considered less formal than using the full word. Unlike many standard abbreviations that are kept in their base form regardless of grammatical context, taivutuslyhenteet follow the grammatical rules of the language. This phenomenon primarily occurs in languages that have rich inflectional systems.