@DialMforMara "Freelance linguist" as the first two words in your bio contributed in no small part to my following you. I've a BA in linguistics, but only use it really for listening to intensely interesting podcasts and yelling at other programmers and product folks about why we're doing everything wrong in order to have goo localization of our shit.

@benhamill I have somehow finally persuaded a tech company that they need a linguist. Haven't got full employment yet, but it's a step in the right direction.

@DialMforMara That's sort of amazing. What will/would you be doing for them? Is language related directly to their core product, or...?

@benhamill They do semantic processing of recorded speech, and want me to come up with sample search terms to give clients. Also to write a grant proposal so they can partner with the university I just graduated from and I can get more hours.

@DialMforMara That's pretty cool. What did you graduate with? If you don't mind my asking.

@benhamill MA in linguistics. Thesis was about speech acts and politeness theory.

@DialMforMara I am really bad at reading academic writing, but this thesis sounds super interesting to meeeee!

Anyway, I'm super glad to have met you on here. :sprakling_heart:

@DialMforMara WTF sprakling. 🤦

@benhamill I know her! She's cosplayed Avacyn the Purifier at the Shadows Over Innistrad spoiler event.
https://www.instagram.com/cspranklerun/?hl=en

@DialMforMara This was super confusing to me at first. That my typo of "sparkling" would collide with an actual person. But on second thought that isn't so surprising, given, well, the internet. Haha.

@benhamill Lovely to meet you too. In case you tweet, I co-moderate #lingchat on the birdsite. This Thursday evening we're discussing accents and dialects.

@DialMforMara ZOMG. Will have to miss it, but maybe I can read after the fact.

@deshipu Fascinating. You got any reference links that might include examples?

@benhamill Well, I'm Polish, so I can give you examples of that off the top of my head:

one pineapple -- jeden ananas
two pineapples -- dwa ananasy
five pineapples -- pięć ananasów

For Japanese, I guess this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_numerals

@benhamill Sorr, for Japanese this is better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_counter_word

@deshipu Is Polish [one, two, many] or are there more forms than that? This is great, by the way, thanks for this. I'll think about it a bit and figure out how I wanna add it to the post.

When I get around to it, I'll also try to remember to add your name to the "thanks" section. If you want that, how should I refer to you?

@benhamill So the rule is that numerals ending with 2, 3, or 4 get the first plural form, and the rest get the second. Other languages that have many plurals have other rules. This is actually handled by gettext to some degree, if you use the ngettext call. Of course, it won't handle such complex and context-dependent rules as in Japanse or Chinese.

There is no need for attribution, thank you.

@deshipu Thanks for pointing these out. 💖

@rascalking Ah yeah. I need to PR my blog post into that list. Thanks for the reminder!