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Earlier quoted context omitted.
The answer is obviously because programmers want to be able to write f”{n} result{‘s’ if n == 1 else ‘’}”
> f"{n} result{'s' if n == 1 else ''}" n>1 is even shorter than n!=1 (also you wrote == instead of != your code is backwards)
The answer says zero is treated as "plural" because we say "0 books". Interestingly, we can say either: 1. "There are no books on this subject" 2. "There is no book on this subject"
French, which treats zero as a singular I believe has a weird way of saying "no one" Personne on its own means ''no one'', but une personne means a person.
The answer says zero is treated as "plural" because we say "0 books". Interestingly, we can say either: 1. "There are no books on this subject" 2. "There is no book on this subject"
“I found a body with no legs.” (plural)
As opposed to: “I found a body with no heads.” (Weird alien concept!)
“I found a body with no leg.” (Ambiguous meaning)
“I found a body with no left leg.” (Zero of “left leg” is not plural, while “zero of leg” is plural.)
Consider, Alien Crimescene show: I found a body. Someone had chopped off the leftmost head. The remaining heads stared at me with their 47 dead eyes.
Oh trigger warning, gore, btw.
Funny 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
10 foot long pole.
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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.
There exist an infinite number of unprovable-but-true statements for any given set of axioms of sufficient complexity (e.g. arithmetic). I find it conceivable that having "more than one mathematics" would be quite practical!
The answer says zero is treated as "plural" because we say "0 books". Interestingly, we can say either: 1. "There are no books on this subject" 2. "There is no book on this subject"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
French, which treats zero as a singular I believe has a weird way of saying "no one" Personne on its own means ''no one'', but une personne means a person.
IIRC, formally "personne" has to be used with the "ne" negation in order to mean 'nobody', such as "personne ne l'a vu", which makes a certain kind of sense ('a person hasn't seen it' -> nobody has seen it). But French people usually drop "ne" in spoken language.
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This example does sound wrong to a native English speaker. It contains a subjunctive mood construct and the correct version would be: "What if there were no stars in the sky?"
"What if there were no star in the sky?" also works even if you want to use the subjunctive. Note that not all native speakers of English use or prefer this type of construction. Also, this use of "were" instead of "was" is sometimes now called irrealis and considered separate from the subjunctive (which is then used to refer only to constructions like "it's important that you be here early tomorrow").