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Re: gettext and plurals
From: Bruno Haible <haible@xxxxxxx>
A comment on the ngettext function (I just read the new glibc CVS
documentation on this): According to [1], there are languages with more
than singular and plural: Arabic, Lithuanian, Slovenian, and Ancient Egyptian
have singular, dual, plural. You cannot cover them with an 'ngettext'
function which takes two strings:
printf (ngettext ("%d file removed", "%d files removed", n), n);
because three strings would be needed for these languages. (Can anyone
fluent in one of these languages give more details?)
You are right, but the way I understand the (admittedly vague and talkative)
description of ngettext it takes such cases into account.
(Indeed, if the idea just is to have translations of each English string,
then there is no need for ngettext.)
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Linux-UTF8: i18n of Linux on all levels
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