9 ms·
Why is zero plural? (2024)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- readthenotes1 2y agoFunny that 1 litre is singular but 1.0 lires is plural even though 1.0 is more precisely singular than 1. IOW, English is screwy
- d99kris 2y agoIf you write it out as "one litre" vs. "one point zero litres" it becomes a little bit more consistent though.
- cies 2y agoI disagree 1.0 is more precise one than 1. Both in speaking language, and in quite some programming languages "1" is assumed to be an integer, and "1.0" is assumed to be a number with one decimal (something akin to a float). And I'd say integer "1" is the most precise type of one. If we are rounding numbers you are right though... round_to_int(0.5000000 to 1.499999) -> 1 round_to_one_decimal(0.9500000 to 1.049999) -> 1.0
- Terr_ 2y ago> I disagree 1.0 is more precise one than 1. It depends on the context/subtext: Is the other person trying to communicate something extra by adding the .0 portion? Some are, some aren't. A programmer might use it to distinguish a data-type even though they are otherwise equal, an engineer might use it for significant-figures, etc.
- gerdesj 2y ago[flagged]
- alt187 2y agoSpelling.
- stephen_g 2y agoI might just take it that the special case is more for the word 'one', not the value of one. Or perhaps more for one of a discreet object, where the litre is considered as a single thing but 1.0 is implying a continuous measurement so it changes how we think of it?
- croes 2y agoIt’s the same in German. Not for liter because the German Liter is also its plural form.
- Dalewyn 2y ago1 feet long cable. 10 foot long pole.
- thrance 2y agoIn French, the official rule from our (way too expensive) Académie Française is, that it's plural if you have at least x of it, where |x|≥2.
- JadeNB 2y agoWhat would it mean for x to be negative, if x is how many of something you have?
- tsimionescu 2y agoWould anyone, even a member of the Academy, write "il y a 1.33 femme pour chaque homme"?
- seszett 2y agoThe Académie française does not edict official rules. Nobody does, there is no official governing authority for the French language but the ministry of Education is the main reference in France. Their rules are generally used for official documents, and since they decide what gets taught to children that's what becomes the normal language when the children become adults. Also, it costs about 1 million euros per year[0], I wouldn't call that very expensive on the scale of a country like France. Even if it's absolutely useless. In practice, zero is normally singular in French unless you want to show that there is none of a number of things ("zéro produits artificiels", "zéro émissions"). [0]https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/2017/12/14/bonjour-combien-l-academie-francaise-coute-t-elle-au-contribuable-son-fonctionnement-est-il-soumis-a_1652756/ https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/2017/12/14/bonjour-combi...
- gerdesj 2y ago[flagged]
- shkkmo 2y ago> The second example I give of "zero threes" does not imply that three is plural. If anything it merely implies belonging or associativity in a linguistic sense and certainly not a maths sense. It absolutely does denote plurality. "0 threes" uses "three" in the plural form and "1 three" uses "three" in a singular form. Thus is not a question about math, but about linguistics.
- hyrix 2y agoThe answer is obviously because programmers want to be able to write f”{n} result{‘s’ if n == 1 else ‘’}”
- remram 2y ago> f"{n} result{'s' if n == 1 else ''}" n>1 is even shorter than n!=1 (also you wrote == instead of != your code is backwards)
- antiframe 2y agoBut the whole point is that "0 result" is not correct but "0 results" is.
- remram 2y agoThe question is why is "0 results" correct. hyrix's answer is so that you have a simple equation for plural, my response is that if "0 result" was correct we would have an even simpler equation.
- DonHopkins 2y agoThat makes -infinity ... -1 singular too.
- thfuran 2y ago
- Terr_ 2y agoI think it extends from whatever rules govern the much-more-influential word "No", particularly for items which aren't normally capped at 1. Notice how these are all plural, and in each case "no" could be substituted with "zero": * "My shelf contains no books." * "Snails have no legs." * "What if there were no stars in the sky?" You can't simply replace those examples with a singular noun: You're either forced to refactor the grammar or you end up with something that sounds weird/archaic. Ex: * "My shelf contains no book." [Weird/archaic] * "My shelf does not contain a book. [Refactored]
- 9rx 2y ago> You can't naively rewrite those examples with a singular "What if there was no star in the sky?" does not sound particularly weird, and we can find instances of people using that exact phrase. If we focus on the key aspect of that statement, "no star in the sky" appears to be commonly used.
- mayd 2y agoThis example does sound wrong to a native English speaker. It contains a subjunctive mood construct and the correct version would be: "What if there were no stars in the sky?"
- tsimionescu 2y ago"What if there were no star in the sky?" also works even if you want to use the subjunctive. Note that not all native speakers of English use or prefer this type of construction. Also, this use of "were" instead of "was" is sometimes now called irrealis and considered separate from the subjunctive (which is then used to refer only to constructions like "it's important that you be here early tomorrow").
- hgomersall 2y agoIt doesn't really. I'd immediately think "what about the rest of them?". "Not a star" works, but that's because it is made indefinite by the article. I wonder if the point here is that in English, dropping the article implies "the" in a way it doesn't in other languages.
- ks2048 2y agoThe answer says zero is treated as "plural" because we say "0 books". Interestingly, we can say either: 1. "There are no books on this subject" 2. "There is no book on this subject"
- inopinatus 2y agoI use Xero's books.
- thehappypm 2y agoZeno’s book keeps eluding me, I keep getting halfway closer to finishing it
- alterom 2y agoBe careful. That could be a violation of the DMCA, unless you do that one chapter at a time.
- bee_rider 2y agoI was thinking of this too, oddly, also examples around books. I vaguely feel like “no book” could also be parsed as… not one book, maybe? Like we’re saying there isn’t even one book on the subject. Maybe? I dunno. The scenario that popped into my head was: what if you had a bookshop, where the shopkeeper would sometimes pick out books for you. If they said “I have no books for you today,” I’d imagine that they just generally didn’t find any books for you. Meanwhile if they said “I have no book for you today,” I guess I’d expect that you are waiting for a particular book, and it didn’t come in today. Somehow, there is a difference between the absence of a book and the absence of any books, even though in fact there are zero books in either case.
- ks2048 2y agoYes, I think (2) is sort of like saying "not even 1" and more likely a response to someone saying there is a book, whereas (1) is a more common phrasing and is just saying how many books there are.
- 2y ago
- delibes 2y agoThere is no spoon
- mayd 2y ago"I have no spoon." Correct in a situation where exactly one spoon is expected. "There are no spoons here." Correct in a situation where there could be zero, one or more spoons.
- tsimionescu 2y agoThere is no spoon in this room. Equivalent to "There are no spoons in this room".
- yorwba 2y agoThe information they communicate about the number of spoons in the room is the same. The information they communicate about the state of mind of the participants in the conversation is not the same.
- tim333 2y agoThat's because it would get stuck when it's below zero centigrade.
- thayne 2y agoNone of the answers give a really satisfactory answer for the underlying reason. I have a theory, although I don't have any evidence. Zero is arelatively recent concept, and probably became part of the language after the rules for pluralization were well established. So when zero came into use it was used similar to negating a plural, like "no widgets" or "not any widgets", so the plural was used. Or maybe it felt unnatural to use singular with a number other than one.
- egypturnash 2y agoWikipedia tells me that the first known usage of "zero" in English was 1598, certainly well after the rules for plurals were set. Wikipedia also tells me that people started speaking what we now call Old English around 450, and also tells me that there were examples of something close to the idea of "zero" going back as far as 1770BC, although the usual history of "zero" in English just goes back to borrowing it from Sanskrit, where it might have first appeared as early as ~300±80 but definitely appeared in 458.
- thayne 2y ago> there were examples of something close to the idea of "zero" going back as far as 1770BC Ah, yes, I was thinking of in Europe, and as a number, but I failed to specify that.
- egypturnash 2y agoI suspected as much, but felt like being pedantic. :)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mayd 2y agoThe obvious answer is: because zero is not one. Singular means one. Plural means not one.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- xdennis 2y agoBecause speakers of English arrived at the arbitrary decision that it is. Whenever you're faced with the question: "why is x y?", you should ask yourself "is x y?". In this case, zero is plural... in English. But not in all languages! (I think in Arabic zero is singular.) You can read about plural rules in different languages here[1]. For example some languages have three numbers: singular, dual, and plural. This is what Proto Indo European had and some descendants still do. Have you ever found it weird how "pants" or "glasses" are kinda plural but also kinda singular? An interesting table to look at is here[2]. It compares all the rules in various languages for how to form cardinals. For example, English has two numbers: singular and plural and two rules to determine it: `n == 1`, `n != 1`. My language, Romanian, also has only singular and plural, but we have three different categories: singular, plural without "of", plural with "of": `n == 1`, `n != 1 && n % 100 == 1..19`, `...the remaining cases...`. So we say "3319 horses", but "3320 of horses". It's very weird, but that's how languages work. [1]: https://cldr.unicode.org/index/cldr-spec/plural-rules https://cldr.unicode.org/index/cldr-spec/plural-rules [2]: https://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/46/supplemental/language_plural_rules.html https://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/46/supplemental/language...
- croes 2y agoBecause zero is not singular. If you take singular as equal to 1 and plural as the opposite of singular it‘s obvious
- OJFord 2y agoMore interesting is to compare languages. Other than native English, I only know Hindi (plural zero) and French (singular zero). I wonder what and why the divide is, perhaps especially when among these three at least I believe zero has a common conceptual origin in al-Khvārizmī (post Roman).
- whycome 2y agoYou...want to know how zero is divided?
- dylan604 2y agoEveryone complains about not dividing by zero, but just multiply 0 by the inverse and everything is good.
- makeitdouble 2y agoTo nitpick, French uses both https://dictionnaire.lerobert.com/guide/accord-du-nom-apres-zero https://dictionnaire.lerobert.com/guide/accord-du-nom-apres-... On the more general point, as I understand it comes down to what the speakers expect for the quantity. If it is generally expected to be plural, zero will probably be plural as well, if singular is more usual zero will follow.
- sedatk 2y agoIn Turkish, numbers don’t affect plurality: 0 apple, 1 apple, 2 apple. But you still say “I ate all the apples” in plural.
- another-dave 2y agoIrish is the same — you count with the singular noun, but use plural nouns elsewhere
- crabbone 2y agoIn Hebrew there's a dual beside singular and plural. It's used for things / body parts that come in twos, like legs, pants, scissors etc. Typically, these same nouns don't have a proper plural form, or the plural form is very rarely used / means something else. It's a little weird to use Hebrew word for zero to say that one doesn't have something: it feels like it's been copied from English, but not weird enough for native speakers not to use it. So, when someone says "there are zero pants in the shop", they'd use the dual form. In other situations, when nouns have typical singular and plural forms, and one uses "zero" to mean that there are none available, then most of the time, they'd use plural, except for cases where singular can stand for plural, which is typical for units, currency, "times". So, while maybe not grammatically correct enough to write in a book, it doesn't sound foreign to say "zero meter" to mean "very close" or "zero shekel" to mean "free of charge". Russian and relatives act very similar to English in this regard: I cannot think of a case where it would've been OK to use "zero" with singular noun (outside of nouns that don't have plural form). But using "zero" in this context is not a natural way for anyone to describe the absence of thing. It usually sounds as if the speaker wants to prank the listener who probably expected a non-zero value. Similar to how it would sound if in English you'd use negative numbers for the same purpose: "I have negative one apple" is, I suppose, grammatically correct, but isn't a phrase you'd expect if asking anyone about the number of apples they have.
- inopinatus 2y agoApropos of which I learned today that some languages have not merely a plural, but a whole complex of representations for cardinality, including rather more of the counting values than I expected, and variations for uncertainty and optionality (some might say, superposition). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_number#Types_of_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_number#Types_of_nu...
- kgeist 2y agoRussian has singular, plural and paucal (reserved for small numbers: 2-4). Interestingly, zero is plural, not paucal: 1 kot "1 cat" 3 kota "3 cats" but: 5 kotov "5 cats" 0 kotov "0 cats"
- msuvakov 2y agoSame in Serbo-Croatian: 1 mačka 2-4 mačke 5+ mačaka 0 mačaka
- PinkSheep 2y ago> Slavic family: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Serbian, Croatian https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html#index-dcngettext https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html#ind...
- lIl-IIIl 2y agoAlso 101 becomes singular again, as on "101 kot". There are websites that capture these rules for all common languages, to assist localization and translators. https://docs.translatehouse.org/projects/localization-guide/en/latest/l10n/pluralforms.html https://docs.translatehouse.org/projects/localization-guide/... English is nplurals=2; plural=(n != 1); Russian is much more complex: nplurals=3; plural=(n%10==1 && n%100!=11 ? 0 : n%10>=2 && n%10<=4 && (n%100<10 || n%100>=20) ? 1 : 2);
- SilasX 2y agoEnglish has the same issue with ordinals. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th ... then back to 101st, 102nd.
- LeonB 2y ago“I found a body with no head.” (singular) “I found a body with no legs.” (plural) As opposed to: “I found a body with no heads.” (Weird alien concept!) “I found a body with no leg.” (Ambiguous meaning) “I found a body with no left leg.” (Zero of “left leg” is not plural, while “zero of leg” is plural.) Consider, Alien Crimescene show: I found a body. Someone had chopped off the leftmost head. The remaining heads stared at me with their 47 dead eyes. Oh trigger warning, gore, btw.
- dmurray 2y ago"Why are zero plural?"
- seba_dos1 2y agoDid you mean "why are zero plural"?
- bsdz 2y agoAll even numbers are plural ;-)
- stepbeek 2y agoAs are all primes!
- mkl 2y agoSure, but that doesn't answer the question, as 0 is not prime.
- BossingAround 2y agoAh yes, I'd like three cake please, and 5 cup of coffee.
- Quekid5 2y ago"A implies B" does not mean "B implies A".
- BossingAround 2y agoOf course, but you're forgetting the context. In your world, OP's comment must be simply nonsense. The sun is warm.
- tuvang 2y agoI figured it is because most things in nature exist in multitudes, so there being 0 indicates an absence of multitude. For example: There are trees in this field. There are 0 trees in this field. Singular is the special case, similar to square x rectangle relation.
- MadcapJake 2y agoThis matches my intuition. Zero is synonymous with "the absence of any X". The singular equivalent would be perhaps "non-" or "-less". Hot take: zero is a math concept and math deals with multitudes only (even under one, you're dealing with a multitude of parts). The actual irregularity is the usage of singular noun form in a math context.
- bilekas 2y agoI actually didn't know this so it's new to me but maybe I'm missing the nuances of English.. There is only 1 quantity in 0.. Or inversely there is a singular ABSENSE of a quantity. So how it's explained in the answer doesn't really explain it for me. Edit: I also have a problem understanding "On accident" when for me it's surely "By accident". English is strange.
- gilleain 2y agoIncidentally i see 'on accident' more from Americans. In British English we tend to use 'by', so 'on' sounds a little strange but I've grown to like it recently.
- kevincox 2y agoYeah "on accident" jumps out as wrong to me (a Canadian) but I can appreciate this it is symmetric with "on purpose". I've never heard anyone say "by purpose".
- sitharus 2y agoThe answer is that’s just the way English is. Exactly 1 is singular, everything else is plural (mostly). “On accident” is American English, as a British English speaker I’d consider it a grammatical mistake. The same goes with “I forgot it at home” and similar constructs. However they’re correct American English.
- twnettytwo 2y ago> I forgot it at home As a non-native speaker, I find the sentence equally disconcerting, but it leaves me wondering what one would use to say something to that effect.
- oneeyedpigeon 2y ago"I left it at home" is common, but doesn't have the exact same meaning. Tbh, I don't think there really is a way to say that succinctly in British English—we would probably say "I left it at home", "I forgot to bring it", or—if the full meaning is strictly necessary—"I forgot it, it's at home". Really, "I forgot it at home" is short for "I forgot to bring it; I left it at home".
- kolinko 2y agoFun fact - in Polish we have separate forms for 1 (singular), 2-4 (plural but nit many) and everything else. Zero is in “everything else” 0 książek 0.5 książki 1 książka 2,3,4 książki 2.5 książki 5 and above książek 5.5 (any other fraction) książki >100 and a fraction - depends Singular is for one. The first plural is for things kind of treated as individual objects. The second plural is for things that are treated as a bulk/mass. The moment you use a fraction, the assumption is that you would need to count all I guess, so it’s treated as individual objects. From this perspective, zero of something is zero plural-not-easily countable. Kind of “Zero OF books” like “Ten OF books”, with of being implied by the form of the word.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago> The moment you use a fraction, the assumption is that you would need to count all I guess, so it’s treated as individual objects. I always explained it to myself that, when you use a fraction, you're focusing on that one incomplete object, also calling more attention to the individuality of objects in the set. So in case of say, "100.5 książki", I like to imagine shoving ~95 books into the box very quickly, then slowing down for the last 6 books, counting them off one by one, to know exactly when to stop and saw the 106th book in half. IDK what the official justification is.
- alterom 2y agoInteresting. It's the opposite in Russian — it'd be "100½ książek" there (сто c половиной книжек), even though it's "½ książki" (половина книжки). "½ książek" (половина книжек) is also valid, and it means "half of (all the) books". But in "100½", it's the whole number that determines the ending (i.e. case) of the word.
- TeMPOraL 2y agoFWIW, both "½ książek" and "½ książki" are valid Polish, but they mean different things: - "½ książek" == "połowa książek" == "half of the books", and refers to half of some set, e.g. "połowa książek spadła z półki", "half of the books fell off the shelf". It gets tricky when the set turns out to contain only one book, but that's not spelling/grammar issue anymore. - "½ książki" == "pół książki" or "połowa książki" == "half of the book", as in "pierwszap połowa tej książki jest nudna", "the first half of this book is boring". There's some difference between "pół" and "połowa" that makes them not interchangeable in most cases, but I don't feel confident enough to articulate a rule here.
- axegon_ 2y agoI am not sure that it's a function of English language per se. I speak several language and it's the same story with all of them and one of those languages is Slavic so it comes from a very different root. That said, Greece is a rock throw away and I think the ancient Greek mathematicians(Pythagoras primarily) might have something to do with it: The Egyptians were the first known to use symbols to represents parts of something but it wasn't until the Greeks introduced fractions to express a quantifiable representation of sub-divisions of a unit, making the sub-division it's own unit: you need 4 * 1/4-th's of something to make it to 1 complete unit. Then again, I could be wrong.
- pmontra 2y agoIn Italy we would translate "two 2s, zero 3s, and one 5" as "due 2, zero 3 e un 5". No plurals for the numbers. By the way "un" is the "a" article and not the "uno" number. Using the number would sound more than strange. Languages are just what they settled down to be, until they change little by little every day.
- axegon_ 2y agoI speak Spanish, but it's a different story there: "dos doses, zero treses y un cinco". Numbers can have plurals, which from what I understand is not the case in Italian. Weird cause the languages are very similar in general - I can somewhat easily understand Italian, particularly reading. Listening - not so much. But as far as grammar, they seem to be almost identical. Same with French grammar though Spanish has the equivalent of the English present continuous tense and French does not(also worth mentioning that I don't speak French either, that's what my mum has told me).
- Tainnor 2y agoLinguistically, Spanish and French are Western Romance languages and technically should be closer to each other than Spanish and Italian. However, French also underwent certain significant changes (possibly due to Germanic and/or Celtic influence) that most other Romance languages didn't, hence why it seems more "foreign". But there are a lot of common things between French and Spanish that Italian doesn't share (e.g. the way plurals are formed with "s", or particular sound changes, like adding "e" in front of certain consonant clusters, c.f. Spanish "estrella", French "étoile", but Italian "stella") > But as far as grammar, they seem to be almost identical. Apart from the different plurals, probably the biggest difference to me seems to be that Spanish has three different past tenses, including indefinido, while the corresponding tenses in Italian and French (passato remoto / passé simple) have completely fallen out of use except of highly formal contexts (or, in the case of Italian, certain Southern dialects). Instead you'd just use the perfect.
- cassianoleal 2y agoIn Portuguese, where -2 < x < 2, x is singular. * 0 thing * 0.5 thing * -1.3 thing * 1.99999 thing * -2 things * etc This is true at least in Brazil though I'm fairly certain it's shared grammar with the descendants of the European barbarians who invaded it in the 1500s.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- powerhugs 2y agoIncorrectly top voted answers. "zeroes" is the plural form. The use of zero in "zero 3s" is not the number 0 but an adjective, synonym to "no" in that context. The correct answer is the third one: https://ell.stackexchange.com/a/352496 https://ell.stackexchange.com/a/352496 I guess this is one of the reasons for the failing popularity of the Stack Exchange sites, simply voted best answers that are incorrect. Similar to how you will find 30 incorrect upvoted seemingly correct-but-actually-incorrect answers to many reddit questions with the correct answer hidden deep down in the comments with no karma. Similar how HN is turning out lately, too. Related: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/are-llms-making-stackoverflow-irrelevant/ https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/are-llms-making-stackover...
- kmm 2y agoThe body of the question makes it abundantly clear what the OP is asking, which has nothing to do with the plural form of the noun "zero". You could suggest an improvement to the title, but answering "zeroes" and pretending it's the only correct answer is being deliberately obtuse.
- powerhugs 2y agoHuh? I thought I was being detailed.
- oneeyedpigeon 2y agoI think you're misunderstanding the question — possibly for comedic effect (?), it's hard to tell. "zeroes" is the plural form of the noun "zero", yes. But the question is about using the form "zero" as an adjective and how that should affect the plurality of the noun it applies to: "zero book(s)", for example.
- powerhugs 2y agoI am not trying to be funny. It seems to me that you are misunderstanding the usage of the word zero in this context, as in absence of any. Synonymous to "no", as in "no threes". It is not about the number 0.
- amelius 2y agoTake this sentence: > There is x candy on the counter. Now you know that x is 1. If 0 were not plural, then you wouldn't know that. Therefore it is useful that 0 is plural.
- steveBK123 2y agoTwo thoughts 1) Zero is expressing the absence of any, and its singular "just one" that is a special case 2) Plurality of zero is inconsistent with a lot of more modern creates using singular - zero carb, zero tolerance, etc. In these cases it does look like they simply substituted the word "zero" in for "no".
- bigbacaloa 2y ago[dead]
- alexey-salmin 2y agoBecause it's not singular (ba-dum-tss)
- GTP 2y ago' “I have no legs” means that I have 0 legs (as opposed to 1 leg or 2 legs), while “I have no leg” means that I have not any leg (i.e., I do not have any leg) ' made me laugh :D Edit: To be honest, I don't see the difference between "I have 0 legs" and "I do not have any leg", can someone explain?
- cowsandmilk 2y ago> I do not have any leg I’m not sure what you’re saying, that isn’t grammatically correct.
- GTP 2y agoI took it form one of the Stackexchange answers, I'm not sure what they're trying to say either.
- ctrlp 2y agoNow do "maths"
- tpoacher 2y agoPeople who claim that zero / no is always followed by the plural have zero / no clues what's going on.
- danans 2y agoIt seems that from the large variation in the way different languages treat zero, there's no significant rationale behind whether it's plural or not, apart from following some existing (and ultimately also ad-hoc) pattern. It's just the way that people (via social mechanisms - mostly mimicry) standardized expressing the absence of something.
- taeric 2y agoI'm curious how much of the answer to this is simply because it sounds nicer? That is, the search is largely for technical reasons for something to be so. But, couldn't it just as realistically be that it is an aesthetic path that leads to this? I see one of the comments says it rolls off the tongue nicely. I feel that that is far far more of the reason than people are opting for in the rest of the discussions.
- andrewla 2y agoThat it sounds nicer is equivalent to saying that a native speaker uses it this way. There's no why to it; language evolves based on how it is used. The aesthetics are downstream of the fact that this is the way that native speakers use it. The question is whether there is a rule that we can use to determine the correct way to modify the noun which it modifies. And the answer is ... sort of? As an argument against the pure aesthetic argument (in the sense that maybe the usage of it is driven by superior aesthetics) we can find some counterexamples. We can say "there are zero marks on this ruler" and we can also say "here is the zero mark on this ruler". Both of these sentences make perfect sense and are immediately parsable by a native speaker. "There is zero mark on this ruler" and "here is the zero marks on this ruler" are clearly both wrong. The difference here is that in one case we are using "zero" to refer to a quantity and in the other to a non-quantity.
- taeric 2y agoSort of? The aesthetics are almost certainly driven by other factors, including what phonemes are used. Is why "ya'll" is a word in the south. It isn't like we didn't know how to say "you all" or other similar words. Aesthetically, contracting those into a single word was more pleasant for many people. So, my argument is that you are looking at the words and distinguishing the singular/plural aspect as driving why we say certain things. I'm saying that you can use a phoneme argument for why "there is a zero mark" sounds correct and meaningful, whereas "there is zero marking on this ruler" starts to stretch it. That is, allow me to rephrase my assertion. Rather than saying there is an aesthetic argument, I'm asserting that the phonemes involved are a larger driver than is given credit. Often with grammar rules backfilled to solidify choices.
- mcswell 2y agoBecause zero is not singular. In the context of English grammar, "plural" simply means "not singular."
- csours 2y agoThere is 0.9 (repeating) apple. edit: Math is very precise, and has very obvious correct and incorrect answers. Language much less so. So when we have a question like this, it FEELS like there should be an obvious and precise answer because we are talking about math, BUT we are using language to talk about math, so we are going back to an imprecise realm; which may feel confusing and wrong. This is also the effect behind the engagement bait word problems and order of operations problems you see on social media.
- amilios 2y agoSo here's a modern Greek perspective to add to the choir. In modern Greek zero is indeed plural, you would say 0 βαθμοί for example to say 0 degrees. However, in contrast to English: 1.5 books ενάμιση βιβλίο -- singular! You are functionally saying something closer to "a book and a half" in english I guess! Actually this is an interesting duality in english: 1.5 books but a book and a half. Guess it depends on how "separate" linguistically the numbers are: is it one book and a half book or is it a single quantity? Greek for decimals between 1 and 2 picks the "two quantities" approach.
- reverendsteveii 2y agoWhy are zero plural /s
- frizlab 2y agoIn French 0 is singular. Plurals are complicated. See https://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/42/supplemental/language_plural_rules.html https://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/42/supplemental/language....
- jjk166 2y agoThe better question is why do we refer to quantities as plural if they do not necessarily need a plurality?