Re: ngettext() not enough?

[Chuck Swiger]

John.Cowan wrote:
> Bob Proulx scripsit:
[ ... ]
> > Actually, no, in American English at least it would still be "zero
> > point one degrees".
>
> Absolutely; I didn't express myself too well.  I'm saying that if someone says
> "one point zero degrees" *because* he says "zero degrees", i.e. because the
> word "zero" precedes the word "degree(s)", then I would expect that
> *by the same token* they would say "zero point one degree" -- which is of course
> not the case.
>
> I continue to think "one point zero degrees" unacceptable if not outright
> ungrammatical, though obviously native speakers don't all agree on this point.

I would read a measurement of 1.0 as plural, unless that value was known to be 
exact, perhaps by definition.  At least as far as a scientist or an engineer is 
concerned, floating point numbers are implicitly plural because they are almost 
always not exact.

For example, pure water has a density of "one gram per cubic centimeter" 
(exact), but if you weigh some tap water, it would be read as having a density 
of "one point zero grams per cc" (plural), because that measurement reflects a 
limited precision of the real value, which might be 1.0004 or whatever, 
depending on the trace concentrations of salt and lead and suchlike which are 
in the water.

--
-Chuck