Latin Numbers Correspond by Gender! Latin Talk
I have never seen this in a language before. Even in Spanish, French and Italian, the only number that changes by gender is one.
Duo pueri
Duae puellae
How's everyone else going with Latin? I'm doing great! What have you learned to say?
EDIT: Only for the numbers two and three sorry
5 Comments
100
Unus, duo and tres, and the hundreds (centum, ducenti, etc.) decline by gender and case. So, 3x5 forms each. (Though not 15 different forms each.)
You can get a fuller overview here, under 'numerals': http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/bennett.html#sect78
I remember when my teacher asked us what the plural form of unus was, and we all answered uni instead of duo ...
Good times. :D
Volgav vitsenanieff nivya kevach varatsach.
- 1634
I have never seen this [Numbers Correspond by Gender] in a language before. Even in Spanish, French and Italian, the only number that changes by gender is one.
The modern Romance languages are in fact the exception to a more common general rule of declining 1 to 3 by gender, similar to Latin. For example:
In Russian - and some, maybe most, other Slavic languages - the number two is declined by gender (and by case):
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два - two (masculine & neuter)
-
две - two (feminine)
Same goes (or went ...) for Old English:
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twegen - two (masculine)
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tu - two (neuter)
-
twa - two (feminine)
The number three is also sometimes declined by gender in Old English.
All of the above examples are, of course, in the Nominative Case.
When I said I've never seen meaning towards a language that I've learned. French, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Greek, Japanese and Dutch are all languages I've tried, or am learning currently.
In Haitian and Afrikaans it most certainly doesn't either :D
