0 elephants
1 elephant
2 elephants
100 elephants
I understand the “s” for quantities larger than 1 because it’s plural (more than 1) — but why for 0, which is less than 1? Why does it just “feel more comfortable” (including for me)? Is there a logical reason behind it?
In: 5848
It’s not that “s” is used for when things are greater than 1, but that “s” is used for everything except 1. 0 elephants, 2 elephants, or 0.42635 elephants are all not 1 elephant, so they all get pluralized with the “s”.
Grammatically every numeral that is not 1 uses the plural. At least in english.
You would say there are 0.9 elephants instead of there is 0.9 elephant as well.
The reason it feels more comfortable to you is that learning the english language has trained you think that way. Other languages do it differently. And in casual english you could easily say something like there is no elephant at all. But if you use a numerical value it is just stuck in language and culture. Just a matter of being used to it.
in English, 0 is plural – in other languages 0 is not plural
In arabic (and related) languages there is a 1s, 2s, and more form that re-occurs at 1,2,.. and 11,12,…, and 21,22,… and 31, 32 … and so forth
Languages are weird
this talks about some of it:
[https://lingohub.com/blog/2019/02/pluralization](https://lingohub.com/blog/2019/02/pluralization)
The Oxford dictioanaries also refer to things as “countable” verses not – countable
[https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/grammar/a1-a2-grammar/countable-and-uncountable-nouns-1](https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/grammar/a1-a2-grammar/countable-and-uncountable-nouns-1)
Out of all the elephants in the world, you have 0 of the elephants.
You might get 1 elephant some day.
You probably won’t get 100 elephants.
Plural does not mean “more than one” (that’s an oversimplifying definition). It actually means the opposite of singular. Zero is non-singular, therefore it is plural.
What about 1.5 elephant(s)?
Actually this is a question Ive had for a long time.
It isnt one, yet you say “one (and a half) elephants…”. But, it isnt 2 elephants. It isnt 1 elephant. Is 1.5 elephante supposed to be plural or singular?
Because quantities are expressed in plural by default, as in “how many elephants are in this room?” so “there are no elephants here” is why it makes sense to say zero elephants.
The exception is when there’s one of something, and that’s why it changes to singular.
In Slovenia we actually have a separate word for 2. So it would be something like 1 apple, 2 appli, 3 apples.
it depends on if you’re talking about a math situation or a sentence like in English. I may be reading the question wrong, but I’m sure if it’s it’s somebody with two esses at the end of your name. You don’t want to add an extra ass because it’ll look like there’s multiple of the same person so you would usually just do.
EX: Jesus’ not Jesus’s same thing with Moses because he has an S on the end of his name
A lot of people are explaining the grammar rule very well but since you technically asked “why” the very mundane answer is that the somewhere in the English language’s lineage it happened to change in way for that rule to emerge.
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