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List:       kde-i18n-doc
Subject:    Re: plural
From:       Eduard Werner <edi.werner () gmx ! de>
Date:       2003-06-03 16:53:06
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Sobotu 24 meje 200307:19 popołdnju, Erik K. Pedersen pisaše:
> Mandag den 5. maj 2003 12:40 skrev Jacek Stolarczyk:
> > On Mon, 5 May 2003, Stephan Kulow wrote:
> > [...]
> >
> > > Guys! This doesn't make sense. The plural handling is for handling
> > > different translations for different values. But 0 replacements is a
> > > correct form! When will you start adding a special form for two
> > > replacements because 2 replacements sounds strange? Stop it NOW!
> >
> > It is indeed a correct form  in but a language that only computer
> > scientist
> > think is a normal spoken language :-) It leads to nice phrases like:
> > "There are 0 customers in the queue" or "The queue is empty". The rest of
> > the world would probably say "There is no queue". We have to be careful,
> > because what we treat as an empty object in "normal" world means "no
> > object at all". Hence: 0 is a special case.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Jacek Stolarczyk
>
> This is from awhile ago, but Stephan really is totally wrong on this one.
> It would be totally trivial to have a ThreeForm, I looked at the code, and
> without even knowing any C or C++, I believe I could do it.
> Linguistically it is absurd to claim that 0 and many are treated the same
> way at least in Danish.
> If there was aThreeForm each language team could decide on its own whether
> to use it.
> It would lead to enormous advantages in many languages.
>
> I would really like to have a Threeform with 0,1,many and the arguments I
> have heard against it are mathematical in nature (I am a mathematician
> myself) not linguistic.

I'd like to point out again, we would need a Fourform 0,1,2,many for languages 
like Sorbian or Slovenian (or some Finno-Ugric languages).

Cheers

Edi

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