alt Hacker NewsFun 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.
Replies
Not certain about Polish any more (it’s 15 years or so since I studied) but certainly Russian uses the genitive singular after numbers ending in 2, 3, and 4 (e.g. 02, 23, 34, but not the “teens”) and genitive plural for numbers ending in 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0). The endings here look the same.
Does Polish also use the same form for 20 as for 0 (i.e. 20 książek)? As I remember it does. If I remember correctly, Polish also differs from Russian in that it only uses the singular for 1, not for all numbers ending in 1 (except 11).
(Note for linguists, it’s not actually quite the genitive, but it’s close enough not to warrant its own case)
It's the same or similar in many if not all Slavic languages. Just goes to show true internationalization in software is almost impossible because you don't know all the rules in all the languages of the world. E.g. if you treat numbers as singular like English does you will have difficulty with Polish because you were unaware it has a special case for 2-4. And then you can have a third language that handles 2-7 differently.
> 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.
And it gets weirder. If you have 5 or more of something, you use the neuter singular form of verbs for it.
4 books were sitting on the shelf = Stały 5 książek na półce [feminine plural verb, which makes sense]
5 books were sitting on the shelf = Stało 5 książek na półce [neuter singular???]
As someone learning Polish this is quite confusing.
We also have a separate case for missing something.
So it's "Mam 3 książki" (I have 3 books) but "Nie mam 3 książek" (I don't have 3 books) or "Brakuje 3 książek" (3 books are missing).
The term in linguistics for a category of 3 or 4 things is "paucal". Most languages with a paucal separate 2 from 3 or 4, resulting in four noun categories/forms by number: singular (1), dual (2), paucal (3 - 4? a few?) and plural (5+). That's quite a common pattern among the world's languages. Polish and the other Slavic languages with this feature are a little unusual in not having the separate dual. A few languages have a trial (3) as a distinct category but it's rare. And some languages distinguish between a greater and lesser paucal, roughly "a few" vs "many", usually with the singular, dual and plural as well, having 5 categories of noun number.
Languages with these features often have lots of irregularities around them, too. In the same way that "pants" are plural for no reason in English, eyes might be plural instead of the obvious-seeming dual, etc. And if that seems all a bit unnecessarily numerical, you may be right; Chinese has gotten by for thousands of years without any plurals at all.