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Plurals..
Message
From
12/06/2008 00:30:05
Dragan Nedeljkovich (Online)
Now officially retired
Zrenjanin, Serbia
 
 
To
10/06/2008 13:45:57
General information
Forum:
Business
Category:
Creative writing
Title:
Miscellaneous
Thread ID:
01322830
Message ID:
01323365
Views:
18
>Oldies but goodies. I wish I knew other languages well enough to post the same sort of thing. Perhaps our non-native-English brethren and sesthren can post for their languages.

Most of it would be lost in translation, and there isn't that much, actually. Not as many irregulars; for instance, the rule that "ne" (a negation) is separate from the verb it negates has exactly four exceptions. The nouns with irregular plurals are really few - "čovek - ljudi" (man - people), but there are a few funny remnants of the dual. Which means that
1 sto - one table (or desk)
2 stola - two tables ("stola" is genitive singular, so "two of a table")
3, 4 stola - three, four tables (still with genitive singular)
5, 6, 7, ... 20 stolova - tables (genitive plural, "of tables")
21 sto - twenty one table - singular! because it has to match the last number, which is one.
22, 23, 24 stola - twenty 2,3,4 of a table
25, 26.. 30 stolova
31, 41, 51, ... 91, 101, 121, 131... - like 21
100 stolova - but it's "sto stolova" because of the lucky coincidence that "sto" is short for hundred (stotina).
102, 103, 104, 122, 123, 124, ... stola

etc etc.

Branislav Nušić, our best comedy writer of late XIX and early XX century would come to his drinking pals and greet them with "Good day, inhumans!" (Zdravo, neljudi). Then he'd explain that since they were only four, they weren't humans (ljudi), they were only four of man (4 čoveka); but when he came, they became 5 ljudi (humans)".

back to same old

the first online autobiography, unfinished by design
What, me reckless? I'm full of recks!
Balkans, eh? Count them.
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