Russia forum: Unbearable Russian Grammar: pluralization (4)
Posted in the Russia forum: How difficult is learning Russian?
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Maxim Buyakov
24 Apr 2009, 19:58Unbearable Russian Grammar: pluralizationBeing a Russian native, I never gave a thought to how we Russians were handling pluralization. That is, until I was recently asked by a customer.
See below and cheer that you do not have to learn Russian (yet ) Or - that you are a native Russian .
So, here we go.
A client asked: "Do you have separate words for singular and plural in Russian, e.g. would you have one word for 'comment' and another word for 'comments'?"
Our Reply:
Re your question, yes, there are 'comment' and 'comments' in Russian, eg there may be a comment on a report, or a comments column in a table. (But there isn't plural for 'bikini', or, say, 'kangaroo', as these are foreign words that do not end in a consonant or -a like Russian.
"Another question regarding pluralisation:
With regards to the Russian words if we need to pluralize a words such as "item" does the pluralization depend on the quantity of items that are being pluralized?
Phrased in a more general way: Is there ever more than one way to pluralize a single Russian word?"
Our Reply:
* When explicitly used with a counting number, the form for 2,3 and 4 items is identical to singular genitive case.
For 5 - 20 items it's plural genitive.Then,
21, 31, ..., 101 ... = 1 - always singular (like '21 item').
22-24, ..., 102-104, 122-124 ... = 2 - 4
25-30, ... 105-120, ... = 5 - 20So, we have 1 item (singular), 2,3 and 4 'item-a', 5-20 'item-ov'
* When not counted, then it's a singular 'item' and plural 'item-y', either subject to 6 cases including the nominative (original).
Our Reply 2:
-- I just realised that it's a noun only that is singular genitive, but an adjective to it would be plural genitive.
It is a plural adjective coupled with a singular noun, both genitive.In addition, if the numbers 2, 3 and 4 are themselves in the genitive or other indirect case ("Of 2 items..." then the trailing adjectives and nouns are all plural.
I guess we Russians don't get confused because 2, 3 and 4 end in a vovel, while 5-20 - in a consonant, and that reflects in our heads.
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Originally posted at englishdic.livejournal.com/1942.html-----------------
Last edited 24 Apr 2009, 20:01
Maxim Buyakov
Principal, Maxim Global Services
Russian/English Technical and Legal Translation, Voiceover
http://www.AskMaxim.com/
