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Saturday, November 15th, 2008

Adresse internationale – Kansainvälinen osoite

Translation: [ Google | Babelfish ]

Categories: [ Grumbling ]

Lorsqu'on envoie une lettre depuis l'étranger vers la Finlande, on préfixe le code postal par « FI- ». Pas « FIN- » ni « SF- » . Lorsqu'on envoie une lettre depuis l'étranger vers la France, on ne fait pas précéder le code postal par un quelconque code.

Kun lähetetään kirje ulkomailta Suomeen, postinumeron eteen kirjoitetaan “FI-”. Ei “FIN-” eikä “SF-”. Kun lähetetään kirje ulkomailta Ranskaan, ei kirjoiteta mitään postinumeron eteen.

[ Posted on November 15th, 2008 at 21:23 | 6 comments | ]

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Comments

Personally, I've never addressed mail to Finland with the prefix. I suspect that it exists (as it does in addresses in the German-speaking countries) as a sort of 'check digit' for when the country name may be written in a foreign form (since it should be written in the language of the mail's origin for the benefit of the sorters!). Maybe France feels like they don't really care.

P.S. Clicking on this comment box causes the cursor to jump to the 'name' field and highlights its contents. I have to tab to this box to type in it. The remaining fields are working properly.

Comment #1, Tuuli Mustasydän (Edmonton, Canada), October 23rd, 2008 at 08:52

Me neither, but I was wondering what's the proper way to write international addresses. I received yesterday a letter which where the zip code was prefixed with SF, which is the country code you could find at the back of the cars in Finland before 1992 (Nowadays it's FIN). I was wondering if automobile country codes were actually used in writing addresses, and started to search the web for the answer. You should use ISO3166 2-letter codes (the same as at the end of internet domain names) if the destination country advises you to use it. Finland advises to use it, France does not. The rules for Germany is ``In items for Germany, on no account should a country code (D- or DE-) be written in front of the postcode. This could cause delays in processing items that can be sorted by sorting machine.'' ( http://www.upu.int/post_code/en/countries/DEU.pdf )

And about jumpy cursors, I guess it's a bug in your web browser, I haven't coded anything that would make this happen.

Comment #2, Matthieu Weber (Jyväskylä, Finland), October 23rd, 2008 at 09:16

Nitpick: It's only a 'zip code' in the United States. As far as I know, everywhere else it is a 'postal code'.

Yeah, I meant that the German thing was the same as the Finnish thing - that you're only supposed to prefix if it's coming from elsewhere. (For some reason I remember looking this up on posti.fi. Dunno why.)

I have personally seen mail sorting machines in Canada (we don't use any prefixes) and I know I probably give postal personnel a hard time when I mail stuff to my friends because I like to use fancy calligraphy on my envelopes (if the machine can't read it, it sends a photograph to a human operator to interpret).

The sorting machines are also the reason that in Canada, we are advised to write addresses IN BLOCK PRINT without any punctuation.

I dunno, I'm just using FF 3.0.3.

Comment #3, Tuuli Mustasydän (Edmonton, Canada), October 23rd, 2008 at 09:32

Oops, I meant Switzerland when I said the German thing (they advise a "CH-" prefix, IIRC).

Comment #4, Tuuli Mustasydän (Edmonton, Canada), October 23rd, 2008 at 09:34

http://www.upu.int/post_code/en/countries/CHE.pdf doesn't mention any CH prefix :)

Comment #5, Matthieu Weber (Jyväskylä, Finland), October 23rd, 2008 at 09:39

I've seen it before, though. I'm gonna have to look around - I have the most random crap from all over the Germanic parts of Europe.

Comment #6, Tuuli Mustasydän (Edmonton, Canada), October 23rd, 2008 at 09:40

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