4 ms·

I rather like Greek for having a dual form as well as a singular and plural form. (Translators made me add dual-form messages as well as singular and plural for

I rather like Greek for having a dual form as well as a singular and plural form. (Translators made me add dual-form messages as well as singular and plural form messages).

cyberax 2y ago
Slovenian has four plural forms and Arabic has _six_. Here's a nice list with details and rules: https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/Plural-forms.html https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/Plural...
- dhosek 2y ago
  Looking at that page, I’m not buying the claims. I’m not an expert on Slovene, but my understanding is that it only has singular, dual and plural and not the 3–4 special case (which seems to have been confused with other Slavic languages like Czech and Slovak). I don’t think their dual rule is correct for Slovene either. I’m surprised about the higher in the conversation comment about Greek as the dual exists in Modern Greek only as a grammatical feature of the written form of the word for “two” and is rare in classical Greek.
  - cyberax 2y ago
    Having three plural forms for Slavic languages is typical, e.g. Ukrainian and Russian have them. Roughly speaking, one form for numerals ending with "1", a different form for numerals ending in "2", "3", "4", and the third form for the rest of them (simplifying a bit). Slovenian appears to have a special word form for numerals ending in "2". Looks like it's a remnant of the dual number that existed in early Slavic languages: https://study.2tm.eu/blogs/the-dual-number-in-the-slovenian-language-practical-feature-or-complicated-nonsense/ https://study.2tm.eu/blogs/the-dual-number-in-the-slovenian-... And it is indeed unusual!
  - david_allison 2y ago
    From the underlying data: * 1 dan * 2 dneva * 3 dnevi * 5 dni https://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/latest/supplemental/language_plural_rules.html#sl https://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/latest/supplemental/lang...

I rather like Greek for having a dual form as well as a singular and plural form. (Translators made me add dual-form messages as well as singular and plural form messages).

cyberax 2y ago

Slovenian has four plural forms and Arabic has _six_. Here's a nice list with details and rules: https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/Plural-forms.html https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/Plural...

dhosek 2y ago
Looking at that page, I’m not buying the claims. I’m not an expert on Slovene, but my understanding is that it only has singular, dual and plural and not the 3–4 special case (which seems to have been confused with other Slavic languages like Czech and Slovak). I don’t think their dual rule is correct for Slovene either. I’m surprised about the higher in the conversation comment about Greek as the dual exists in Modern Greek only as a grammatical feature of the written form of the word for “two” and is rare in classical Greek.
- cyberax 2y ago
  Having three plural forms for Slavic languages is typical, e.g. Ukrainian and Russian have them. Roughly speaking, one form for numerals ending with "1", a different form for numerals ending in "2", "3", "4", and the third form for the rest of them (simplifying a bit). Slovenian appears to have a special word form for numerals ending in "2". Looks like it's a remnant of the dual number that existed in early Slavic languages: https://study.2tm.eu/blogs/the-dual-number-in-the-slovenian-language-practical-feature-or-complicated-nonsense/ https://study.2tm.eu/blogs/the-dual-number-in-the-slovenian-... And it is indeed unusual!
- david_allison 2y ago
  From the underlying data: * 1 dan * 2 dneva * 3 dnevi * 5 dni https://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/latest/supplemental/language_plural_rules.html#sl https://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/latest/supplemental/lang...