In 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.
Would anyone, even a member of the Academy, write "il y a 1.33 femme pour chaque homme"?
Why is zero plural? (2024)
61–70 of 209 posts
Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#62None of the answers give a really satisfactory answer for the underlying reason. I have a theory, although I don't have any evidence. Zero is arelatively recent concept, and probably became part of the language after the rules for pluralization were well established. So when zero came into use it was used similar to negating a plural, like "no widgets" or "not any widgets", so the plural was used. Or maybe it felt un…
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Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#63More interesting is to compare languages. Other than native English, I only know Hindi (plural zero) and French (singular zero). I wonder what and why the divide is, perhaps especially when among these three at least I believe zero has a common conceptual origin in al-Khvārizmī (post Roman).
In Turkish, numbers don’t affect plurality: 0 apple, 1 apple, 2 apple. But you still say “I ate all the apples” in plural.
Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#64I think it extends from whatever rules govern the much-more-influential word "No", particularly for items which aren't normally capped at 1. Notice how these are all plural , and in each case "no" could be substituted with "zero": * "My shelf contains no books." * "Snails have no legs." * "What if there were no stars in the sky?" You can't simply replace those examples with a singular noun: You're either forced to re…
[A lesser light asks Ummon⫽ What are the activities of a sramana>⫽ Ummon answers⫽ I have not the slightest idea⑊⫽ The dim light then says⫽ Why haven’t you any idea>⫽ Ummon replies⫽ I just want to keep my no-idea] ⠀
I'm not seeing a "zero" in there that would allow us to test if it can be replaced with "no."
I would not expect that no->zero is, er, grammatically symmetric to zero->no.
Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#65[deleted]
Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#66Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
[A lesser light asks Ummon⫽ What are the activities of a sramana>⫽ Ummon answers⫽ I have not the slightest idea⑊⫽ The dim light then says⫽ Why haven’t you any idea>⫽ Ummon replies⫽ I just want to keep my no-idea] ⠀
I'm not seeing a "zero" in there that would allow us to test if it can be replaced with "no." I would not expect that no->zero is, er, grammatically symmetric to zero->no.
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Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#68Russian has singular, plural and paucal (reserved for small numbers: 2-4). Interestingly, zero is plural, not paucal:
1 kot "1 cat"
3 kota "3 cats"
5 kotov "5 cats"
0 kotov "0 cats"Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#69More interesting is to compare languages. Other than native English, I only know Hindi (plural zero) and French (singular zero). I wonder what and why the divide is, perhaps especially when among these three at least I believe zero has a common conceptual origin in al-Khvārizmī (post Roman).
You...want to know how zero is divided?
Everyone complains about not dividing by zero, but just multiply 0 by the inverse and everything is good.
Re: Why is zero plural? (2024)
#70[flagged]
This is a question about the English language from someone learning the language, not a math question.
Why are gerdesj's maths plural but your math is singular? Does he know more maths than you?
Personally I believe that all math is connected, and just different aspects of the same math, so there is only one, like a monotheistic God.