Sinhalese Plural Form

Carlos Perelló Marín wrote:

>On Tue, 2005-10-11 at 16:43 +0600, Anjula >> Info-share wrote:
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>Hi
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>>In Sinhalese (Sri Lankan language), the plural form changes based on
>>whether the subject is animate or inanimate.
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>>In both cases (inanimate or animate), the singular form is different.
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>>‘zero items’ is generally not used in Sinhalese. But, if using it
>>should be similar to the plural form.
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>>Ex: 
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>>1 man               -           minihek (or 1 minihek)
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>>2 men               -           minissu 2 denek
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>>5 men               -           minissu 5 denek
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>>(0 men              -           minissu 0 denek)
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>>1 dog                -           bal’lek (or 1 bal’lek)
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>>5 dogs              -           ballo 5 denek
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>>1 book              -           pothak (or 1 pothak)
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>>5 books             -           poth 5’k
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>>(0 books           -           poth 0’k)
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>>In Sri Lanka we’re taking a great effort to promote OpenSource
>>software. As you know, the FOSS conference was also held in Sri Lanka
>>this year (www.fosssl.org). We are keen to translate commonly used
>>OpenSource apps to Sinhalese, the main local language. 
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>>So the formula would be:
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>>n==1 ? 0 : 1 ……….. (but different for animate and inanimate objects)
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>If that's the case, the formula would be:
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>n == 1 ? 0 : n == 5 ? 2 : 1
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>That's 0 elements or 5 elements or whatever elements. If it's an animate
>object, the second and third forms will be the same and differents for
>inanimated objects.
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>Do we agree? Please, confirm me it and I will add that plural form.
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Actually it sounds to me much more like Urdu:

"n==1 ? 0 : 1" and the gettext's nplurals value == 2

Since 5 was just an example number in the above ... (and the only case with 5 and 2 shows the same form)
Of course I don't speek Sinhala so I'm guessing

David