ubuntu-l10n-cy team mailing list archive

[Christopher Swift <christopher.swift@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ar Iau, 2010-09-23 am 20:21 +0200, ysgrifennodd Leandro Regueiro: 
> 
> Thanks Tony and Christopher. This is very difficult to understand.
> 
> If I understood it well you have "singular" and "plural", but you also
> have something called "mutations", that depending on the number of
> "items" will cause one of four possible mutations that alter the
> following word (or words). And after a number you always use
> "singular". So when you put the equation "nplurals=4; plural= (n==1) ?
> 0 : (n==2) ? 1 : (n != 8 && n != 11) ? 2 : 3" in Gettext translation
> files you put it only for mutations, and not for plural/singular like
> the other languages do.
> 
> So given the following list:
> 
> 0 dogs
> 1 dog
> 2 dogs
> 8 dogs
> 11 dogs
> any other number dogs
> 
> you always use the singular form of "dogs" after the number, and if
> there is another word after "dogs" you alter it using the "mutations",
> and that is the only reason why you use the equation, isn't it?
> 
> 
> My idea is to allow a system that for a given concept you can specify
> several translations for language, and for several languages. For
> example:
> 
> dog (english)
> can (galician; masculine singular)
> cadela (galician; feminine singular)
> cans (galician; masculine plural)
> 
> so when you type the text, you select the language, the part of speech
> (noun for example), and if it is applicable (you won't put "plural"
> for a "verb", at least for galician language) automatically the system
> reloads the list of possible plural forms and shows the following for
> galician language (the same for english):
> 
> singular (n=1)
> plural (n!=1)
> 
> for french will show:
> 
> singulier (n<2)
> pluriel (n>1)
> 
> how would it be for welsh?
> 

Dog can be ci, chi, gi or nghi in Welsh as singular word, as a plural it
can be cwn, gwn, chwn and nghwn.  Dogs no matter if they are male or
female can only be a masculine singular noun or a masculine plural noun
in Welsh.  

If you are interested in initial consonant mutation, there is a good
explanation at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Welsh/Mutations .

Almost every single word in Welsh that begins with p, t, c, b, d, g, ll,
m & rh can be mutated in Welsh.  

In Welsh you can also have plural adjectives which is related to your
parts of speech.  Adjectives in Welsh can also mutate depending on if
the preceding noun is masculine or feminine too.  So for example y ferch
fawr is "the big girl" but "y bachgen mawr" is "the big boy", mawr has
changed to fawr after a feminine singular noun.  Adjectives can also
have gender such as gwyn and gwen which both mean white.  However
adjectives with a gender are very rare in Welsh but they do exist.  

In regards to the verbs, every verb can conjugate in Welsh as they do in
English and in French, however it is the same as most languages that I
have encountered. For example the verb "to be" can take six forms.
Rydw i / I am
Rwyt ti / You are (s)
Mae e/hi / He/She/It is
Rydyn ni / We are
Rydych chi / You are (pl)
Maen nhw / They are
However in Welsh it is very common to only ever use the radical form of
the verb in the present tense.  For example "I love" in Welsh would be
"Rydw i'n caru" which can also mean "I am loving", or "He does" would be
"Mae e'n gwneud" which can also mean "He is doing".
Verbs in Welsh can also mutate.  For example "Rydw i'n mynd i garu"
would mean "I am going to love" where "garu" is the mutated form of
"caru" (to love).  

As for when a program translates the word dog for example it should
output the following:
Dog (English)
Ci (Welsh; Masculine singular)
Cwn (Welsh; Masculine plural)

If however the user were to enter "Gi" into the interface as a noun to
translate from Welsh to English, herein lies a problem.  You might be
able to output something like:
Gi (Welsh; Soft Mutation; Masculine singular)
Ci (Welsh; No Mutation; Masculine singular)
Dog (English; Singular)
Dogs (English; Plural)

Just for your information, Welsh is not the only language in Europe to
have consonant mutation, as I understand the Breton language also has
consonant mutations.

I'm sorry for including so much information but I hope that this helps a
little bit,

Christopher Swift.