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Re:Why is zero plural? (2024) by whycome on Tuesday January 21, 2025 @11:04PM (#42788865)
French, which treats zero as a singular I believe has a weird way of saying "no one"

Personne on its own means ''no one'', but une personne means a person.

Re:Why is zero plural? (2024) by Tainnor on Wednesday January 22, 2025 @01:16AM (#42789634)
IIRC, formally "personne" has to be used with the "ne" negation in order to mean 'nobody', such as "personne ne l'a vu", which makes a certain kind of sense ('a person hasn't seen it' -> nobody has seen it). But French people usually drop "ne" in spoken language.
Re:Why is zero plural? (2024) by whycome on Wednesday January 22, 2025 @02:23AM (#42790031)
You're right as far as I know. But it's also funny to type in both "nobody" and "anybody" into Google translate and they both translate to "personne".
Re:Why is zero plural? (2024) by bkazez on Wednesday January 22, 2025 @07:14AM (#42791922)
“Sans personne” means “without anyone” and has no “ne”.
Re:Why is zero plural? (2024) by Tainnor on Wednesday January 22, 2025 @09:55AM (#42793463)
Ok, but it literally means "without person", so is equally unsuprising.
Re:Why is zero plural? (2024) by Xmd5a on Wednesday January 22, 2025 @09:48AM (#42793372)
And "rien" (nothing) used to mean something (via latin "res")
Re:Why is zero plural? (2024) by lloeki on Wednesday January 22, 2025 @12:48PM (#42795470)
"Un petit rien" => a small thing

Typically used in "les petits riens de la vie", meaning the small things in life that may be overlooked but constitute the true things that make it worth living.

Re:Why is zero plural? (2024) by whycome on Thursday January 23, 2025 @09:09PM (#42809915)
The cognitive origins of these must be interesting. Rooted in our understanding of existence?