Numbers

Numbers in all languages seem to be something that deserves our attention, since they can sometimes behave in quite unpredictable ways.

In Basque, for example, numbers are placed before nouns, as seems to be the case with most Indo-European languages, except the word for one, bat, placed after the noun. Etxe bat (one house), bi etxe (two houses). Although Basque has the plural, it's not used after numbers.

Latin for one, two and three had three forms: unus (m.), una (f.), unum (n.); duos (m.), duae (f.), duo (n.), tres (m./f.), tria. The three-gender two has partly been preserved in Portuguese (dois, m; duas, f.), Romanian (doi, m.; două, f./n.) and Catalan (dos, m.; dues, f.). French, Italian and Spanish have only one word for that number: deux, due, dos, respectively. Romanian also boasts an interesting feature: numbers beginning at 20 have to be preceded by the preposition de: două case (two houses), but douăzeci de case (twenty houses). Spanish and Portuguese hundreds agree in gender with the noun they modify: doscientos hombres/duzentos homens (two hundred men), doscientas mujeres/duzentas mulheres (two hundred women).

Slavic languages have their fair stock of complexity when it comes to numbers, since here gender, number and case have to be taken into consideration. One has three forms in Polish, Czech, Russian and Macedonian: jeden, jedna, jedno; jeden, jedna, jedno; один, одна, одно; еден, една, едно, respectively, and are followed by the nominative or accusative singular. The number for two has two forms, in which sometimes the masculine agrees with the neuter (Polish dwa, Russian два) or the feminine agrees with the neuter (Czech dvě). Numbers 2 to 4 are followed by nouns in the genitive singular in Russian, but not in Polish and Czech, which require nominative or accusative plural instead. In all the Slavic languages discussed in this post except Macedonian, numbers 5 upwards all require the genitive plural, except Russian when tens end in 1, 2, 3 or 4 as in 21, 22, 23, 31, 32, 33, etc. Macedonian, having lost almost all its cases, uses numbers with singular or plural nouns, as in English, except that monosyllabic words with numbers from 2 to 10, especially, very commonly end in a: два дена (two days), instead of the regular два денови.

There's more: Polish numbers have a special form when they are used with animate nouns, which doesn't occur in the other Slavic languages I've mentioned:
Na stole leżą dwa notesy. - There are two notebooks on the table (notes, notebook, is inanimate).
W pokoju stoją dwaj panowie. - There are two men in the room (pan, singular of panowie, man, is animate).
Instead of dwaj, the more colloquial genitive form dwóch could be used, which, oddly enough, requires a singular verb and a noun in the genitive plural:
W pokoju stoi dwóch panów.

Slovak is like Polish here, but unlike Czech:
Na stole ležia dva zošity/notesy.
V pokoji stoja dvaja páni.

In Czech you would have dva in both cases:
Na stole leží dva sešity.
V pokoji stojí dva páni/pánové.

Slavic languages also have an interesting set of numbers that are used with nouns that come in pairs, like scissors, pants, and so on, or that only exist in the plural form, the so called pluralia tantum, which, it goes without saying, also need to be declined in gender, number and case. After these numbers, Polish, Slovak and Russian require genitive plural and Czech, nominative/accusative plural.
Polish: Mam dwie gazety. (I have two newspapers).
Mam dwoje okularów. (I have two pairs of glasses).




Some German numbers can be declined, although in practice they seldom are: Die Liebe zweier Brüder (the love of two brothers).

And Japanese has the counters. Numbers cannot just be placed before a noun. You need to know the exact counter that goes with such and such word based on the shape of the concept you have in mind. There are counters for long objects like bananas and umbrellas, counters for buildings and houses, counters for small animals, counters for sheets of paper, etc.