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The GNU Compiler Collection contains the following strings to be translated:

operand %d should be a 6 bit unsigned immediate
operand %d should be a 8 bit unsigned immediate
operand %d should be a 3 bit unsigned immediate

To save translator's effort, I asked the GCC developers to combine these diagnostics into a single one:

operand %d should be a %d bit unsigned immediate

Since the English form of the sentence uses the singular form, I thought that this would work for other languages, too. Since this form also works for German, French, Spanish and other languages that only know singular/plural, I thought it might work for all languages.

I know that Russian, Polish, Arabic have more than one plural form, which could mean the above strings need to be translated separately.

Or maybe there is an exception that measurement units are always expressed in the singular form, in all languages of the world. Additionally, the word bit is used as an adjective in this case, which might change the rules.

Is there a human language that actually requires different grammar for the 3 sentences above?

Roland Illig
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1 Answers1

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The Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR) has a table of plural rules for all languages. Check out the link below:

http://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/latest/supplemental/language_plural_rules.html

In your case, since you're issuing "bit" as an adjective, pluralization rules done apply.

JME
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