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List:       kde-i18n-doc
Subject:    Re: plural handling
From:       Lukas Tinkl <lukas () kde ! org>
Date:       2001-04-03 17:34:45
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Dne po  2. duben 2001 22:09 Roman Maurer napsal(a):
> Stephan Kulow wrote:
> > Four forms, special case for one and all numbers ending in 2, 3, or 4
> >      The header entry would look like this:
> >
> >           Plural-Forms: nplurals=4; \
> >                         plural=n==1 ? 0 : \
> >                                n%10==2 ? 1 : n%10==3 || n%10==4 ? 2 : 3;
> >
> >      Languages with this property include:
> >
> >     Slavic family
> >           Slovenian
>
> I'm afraid that's not quite it for Slovenian.  Our language
> computes singular, dual or plural forms regarding to "mod 100",
> not "mod 10":
>
> The same expression is for (BTW, "datoteka" means "file"):
>
> n%100==1:
> 	1 datoteka, 101 datoteka, 201 datoteka, ...
>
> n%100==2:
> 	2 datoteki, 102 datoteki, 202 datoteki, ...
>
> n%100==3 or n%100==4:
> 	3 datoteke, 4 datoteke, 103 datoteke, 1003 datoteke, ...
>
> otherwise:
> 	0 datotek, 5 datotek, 6 datotek, 10 datotek,
> 	11 datotek, 99 datotek, 100 datotek,
> 	105 datotek, 1005 datotek, etc.

I must admit it took me quite some time to think about all the cases my 
"wonderful" language offers... Well, to make things even more complicated, 
the Czech language supports *both* cases stated above, both being correct and 
used. A short example of what I mean:

1:  jeden soubor (1 file)
2, 3, 4: dva, tři, čtyři soubory (2..4 files)
5+ : pět souborů (5 files)

Now to something more interesting:

11: jedenáct souborů
21: dvacet jedna souborů, dvacet jeden soubor, jedenadvacet souborů 
(*all* of these three meaning 21 files)

and the same for all ((n%10)+1). The trick here is that we say:
<clumsy translation>
- "twenty one of files"
- "twenty one file"
- "one and twenty of files"
</clumsy translation>

So, what do we do now? ;-)

-- 
Lukas Tinkl | lukas@kde.org | lukas.tinkl@suse.cz
KDE i18n maintainer

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