On Tue, 2007-03-20 at 11:27 +0100, Georgi Stanojevski wrote: > Malcolm Tredinnick напиша: > > >> So what would you say in your language (even in english) for -1? > > > > In English, the noun would use the plural form if you were using "minus > > Since I really can't find a definitive source that says it's singular, > I'll trust you because I guess it sounds more natural to say it in > plural as it sounds natural to me in singular. So I'll use a custom > pluralize filter. :) > > But I found this and I want to share them. > > Searching "minus one degree" on Google returns ~11.200 against ~420 when > searching "minus one degrees". Searching "minus one apple", "minus one > vote", "minus one cat"... does return more results than searching it in > plural.
I'd be wary of a Google search like this because (a) I can find lots of websites that say Elvis is still alive, too but more importantly, (b) as in the example sentence I showed, there are two uses of "minus one" (subtracting one and the number one less than zero) and it's hard to construct a search that rules out the former, which is grouping the words as "minus (one object)", instead of "(minus one) object(s)." However, I was thinking about this some more yesterday and I suspect my answer is based on the fact that, like everybody, I speak one particular version of English (of course, it's the One True Correct Version, but not everybody sees it that way :-) ). English is a language that has lots of variations across the globe and, in many international programs, the default locale -- C -- tends to be American English, despite the fact that it looks filled with misspellings to my eye. "Minus one apples" does sound more natural to me, but I could understand it not being universally accepted. It's a real toss-up here. The other thing I realised was that if I ever had to write about -1 objects, I would probably try to avoid it simply because it will grate on somebody's ear whichever way you do it. Turns out, English is hard. :-( > http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cardinal_number#Note_on_usage_of_cardinal_numbers > "When functioning as adjectives, a cardinal number may only precede a > (countable) noun, and the noun will be plural, except for one, 1 minus > one, or -1:" That seems to be a choice they've made as a style guide. It's not referenced to any external source (it's not a wikipedia article, itself). However, as a style guide, it's a good reference point. Regards, Malcolm --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django I18N" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Django-I18N?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
