Why is zero plural? (2024)
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Why is zero plural? (2024)
1–10 of 209 posts
Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#2Funny 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
Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#3In 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.
Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#4[flagged]
Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#5In 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.
What would it mean for x to be negative, if x is how many of something you have?
Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#6Funny 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
If you write it out as "one litre" vs. "one point zero litres" it becomes a little bit more consistent though.
Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#7[flagged]
> 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.
Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#8[flagged]
The answer is obviously because programmers want to be able to write
f”{n} result{‘s’ if n == 1 else ‘’}”Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#9[flagged]
This is a question about the English language from someone learning the language, not a math question.
Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#10Funny 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
I 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