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For the sentence I have 0 votes, which one of these sentences should I say?

Mi havas 0 voĉdonon.

Mi havas 0 voĉdonojn.

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5 Answers 5

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16

According to PMEG, it is equally correct to either:

  • Use the plural ending only for numbers greater than 1 (i.e. use the singular for both 0 and fractions less than 1)
  • Use the plural ending for everything other than exactly 1 (this is what we do in English e.g. "I bought 0.5 pounds of something")

You just have to pick one and stick to it (also note that negative numbers should use the same form as their positive counterpart).

Usually, however, in everyday speech people use neniu instead of nul, so that often sounds more natural: Mi havas neniun voĉdonon. (See PMEG.)

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3

As a native English speaker, zero is the removal of the possibility of the quantity being 1, and so it seems to make sense that it's treated as a plural. However, as far as I know, this is not how it's treated in French and some other languages.

While either will be tendencies of native speakers of different mother languages, perhaps saying:

Mi ne havas voĉdonon.

would be clearer, and avoid any assumption that 0 is a mistake because of the plural ending.

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2

I prefer the interpretation that singular always refers to exactly one (or minus one, negative one). But there are other authoritative interpretations, as Chives said, and you can use either singular or plural.

But voĉdono means voting. I suppose you want to say

Mi havas nul voĉojn

I would use nul only in contexts with other numbers, like

Karlo ricevis tridek voĉojn, Marta ok kaj mi nul voĉojn.

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0

According to Unicode CLDR for language plural rules, Esperanto uses singular for only exactly 1 (and -1). Any other value such as 0 or 0,5 would therefore use plural.

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2
  • In the linked page, before all the rules are listed, it says "When you find errors or omissions in this data, please report the information with a bug report". Doesn't this mean that CLDR is not a good authority on this matter?
    – svendvn
    Commented Jul 23, 2019 at 8:10
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    @svendvn Your logic is flawed. If someone accept error reports and is willing to correct it, that data should have a higher likelihood to be correct. Someone who refuses to change and won't accept input, will have errors that won't be corrected, and have a higher likelihood to be wrong.
    – Liggliluff
    Commented Jul 25, 2019 at 12:04
-2

Ĉu ne, mi havas nenion da voĉdonoj? -> mi havas nul da voĉdonoj?

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1
  • 1
    Ne, tiel oni ne povas diri. Devas esti neniom da voĉoj, neniun voĉon aŭ nul voĉo(j)n. Oni neniam uzas da post la senfinaĵaj nombrovortoj: unu voĉon, dek voĉojn (sed neniam "dek da voĉoj"). Teorie eblas nulo da voĉo(j), kaj oni trovas iom da tiaj uzoj.
    – Harri Laine
    Commented Oct 3, 2016 at 17:51

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