Re: [bug-gettext] French plural form is wrong in gettext documentation

[Davy Defaud]

Le 29/08/2018 à 22:44, Bruno Haible a écrit :

Davy Defaud wrote:

Probably an American “alternative fact”. ;-)

You might have meant to be funny, but pretending that the people who
wrote this documentation lied on purpose is insulting. You should avoid
insults when writing in public.

I was just kidding, indeed. Sorry for those offended, if any.

What I meant was rather that this assertion looked peremptory. But I can’t blame the author(s) not to know all the peculiar rules of every languages, especially when they vonlunteer to write this documentation.

It’s really a pity that ngettext doesn’t have a variant with a
signed (double) float as its last argument.

It can be true for English, but not for every languages and not for
French in particular.

Let's take an example:
  "1,7 litres d'eau" or "1,7 litre d'eau"?
Do you have an example where the singular/plural difference would
even lead to different pronounciation?

Bruno

“1,7 litre d’eau” is definitely the good one.

The rule also applies to the very common used “million” and “milliard” (billion in English) [of whatever]:
“1,7 million de personnes.”, but “2,5 millions de personnes.”

Here’s an example with “bail” (lease, in English), a French noun which have an irregular plural form (pl.: baux):
“Ce propriétaire a signé une moyenne de 1,78 bail par semaine cette année, alors qu’il signait 2,02 baux par semaine en 2017.”

Regards,

Davy

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