this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2025
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xkcd #3140: Biology Department

Title text:

Welcome to the Linguistics Department - It has been [2] [DAYS] since someone noticed that the Biology Department sign has a one-day-long singular/plural disagreement after it resets.

Transcript:

Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com

Source: https://xkcd.com/3140/

explainxkcd for #3140

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[–] KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Polish also does that, but it doesn't show up for the word "day" because the nominative plural and genitive plural forms are the same

I'll use the word "godzina" (hour) instead

1 godzina

2 godziny

3 godziny

4 godziny

5+ godzin

[–] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 3 points 2 months ago

Yes, this is the same as the Czech "hodina". For extra confusion, "godina" or similar means "year" in most East and South Slavic languages.

Advanced translation software like Weblate allows categorization into zero, singular, plural-few, plural-many, unknown with if-statements for each for this reason.