[Freeciv-Dev] Re: [PATCH] More explicit message when a unit is killed by barbarians upon entering a hut.

[Big Gaute <gs234@xxxxxxxxx>]

Tomasz Wegrzanowski <maniek@xxxxxxxx> writes:

> > I ran into a problem while doing this: since some unit names are
> > plurals (e.g. "Settlers") it is not enough to simply use
> > unit_name() as a drop-in replacement for "unit", since you would
> > also have to change "has" to "have" as appropriate.  In the end I
> > rewrote the sentence to avoid the problem, but I am not sure which
> > way is better.
> 
> IMHO ``Settlers'' etc. is name of unit type not unit.  Even if type
> is plural, there is single unit, so singular should be used.  In
> other words, before ``Settlers'' there is implicit ``unit of type''.
>
> Am I very wrong ?

I'm not a native speaker of English any more than you are (I
presume--judging by your name, you're Polish or at least from eastern
Europe, though I've been known to be wrong about these things many
times before,) but I'd say that you are.  Compare:

Your Settlers was killed by barbarians!

and

Your Settlers were killed by barbarians!

The latter reads much better.

> printf ("Your %s unit has been killed by barbarians.", unittype);

This is one way to solve the problem: change the wording, which is
what I did (though slightly differently.)  It all becomes more
difficult when you consider internationalisation.  In some languages
you'd have to consider not only number but also gender (e.g. Russian,
I think).  There is a workaround: just translate the string as though
"unit" was given instead of "%s".  This is less explicit, but avoids
grammatical errors.  (Ideally, this sort of thing should be handled on
the gettext level, but I'm not aware of any way to do it.)

-- 
Big Gaute (not to be confused with LG)
"There was a time when a guy who died at forty was revered as the toughest
and most doggedly ancient son of a bitch in Cow Ass Clearing, Shitoleshire,
Engalond, back in the year dot." - Spider Jerusalem, Transmetropolitan #25