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I undestand that it is correct to write: "Я былa в Москве" but if a name ends with "ё" would it still be correct to end the sentence with an "e"?

"Я былa в Мальмe (Мальмё), Швеция"

shabunc
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Ana
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  • According to the local russian teacher, she claims that if a geographic location ends with an "-a". The "-a" will be converted into an "-e" (See москва example) and all other names will stay as they are. That means according to her that: москва --> B москвe мальмё --> B мальмё Сочи --> B Сочи Can someone confirm this phenomenon to me? – Ana Oct 06 '15 at 22:47
  • well, e.g. "Останкино => в Останкине" is also correct (this rules mostly concerns Russian toponyms, ending in -ово, -ево, -ино); as to "Мальмё", you may safely spell it as "в Мальме", dropping the dots (though not recommended, as the word is rare), but nonetheless you should always read it as "в Мальмё" – Buckminster Oct 07 '15 at 08:23

2 Answers2

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Мальмё is a foreign word which has no declension. In every case you should say just Мальмё and nothing else.

That is "Я была в Мальмё, Швеция" or maybe "Я была в Мальмё, в Швеции".

Matt
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There are many Russian words that are indeclinable. So it's simply: Я былa в Мальмё.

For foreign city names specifically, you can take some of the wisdom on this question on the declension of foreign person names.

There are fairly exact rules on the intonation and final ending combinations that make a word indeclinable, and some exceptions, and some disagreement in some edge cases if we actually look at the data descriptively. (They tend to be foreign words, abbreviations etc.) But for a language learner I think it does not make sense to focus more than minimal effort on learning the rules explicitly - just see the examples.

Community
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Adam Bittlingmayer
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