ICU Plural Rules by Language

CLDR Plural Rules by Language

The Unicode CLDR (Common Locale Data Repository) defines plural rules for every language. When writing ICU plural messages, you must provide the correct categories for each target language. This reference covers the most commonly requested languages.

Plural Category Summary

Language	Categories Used	Notes
English	one, other	one: 1
Japanese	other	No plural distinction
Chinese	other	No plural distinction
Korean	other	No plural distinction
French	one, many, other	one: 0-1; many: large numbers
German	one, other	one: 1
Spanish	one, many, other	one: 1; many: large exact
Portuguese	one, many, other	one: 0-1; many: large exact
Russian	one, few, many, other	Complex rules based on last digits
Polish	one, few, many, other	Similar to Russian
Arabic	zero, one, two, few, many, other	All 6 categories
Hebrew	one, two, other	two: 2
Czech	one, few, many, other	Similar to Russian
Turkish	one, other	one: 1

Languages with No Plural (1 category)

Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin), Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, and Malay use only the other category. These languages do not grammatically distinguish singular from plural:

// Japanese: only "other" needed
{count, plural, other {#個のアイテム}}

Languages with 2 Categories

English, German, Dutch, Italian, Turkish, Hindi, Bengali:

// English
{count, plural,
    one {# item}
    other {# items}
}

Languages with 3 Categories

French, Portuguese (Brazilian), and some others use one, many, and other (CLDR v42+):

// French (CLDR v42+)
{count, plural,
    one {# élément}
    many {# d'éléments}
    other {# éléments}
}

Languages with 4 Categories

Russian, Polish, Czech, Ukrainian:

// Russian
{count, plural,
    one {# файл}
    few {# файла}
    many {# файлов}
    other {# файла}
}

Russian rules:

• one: ends in 1 but not 11 (1, 21, 31, ...)
• few: ends in 2-4 but not 12-14 (2, 3, 4, 22, 23, ...)
• many: ends in 0, 5-9, or 11-14 (0, 5, 6, ..., 11, 12, 13, 14, 20, 25, ...)
• other: fractions and remaining cases

Arabic: All 6 Categories

Arabic is the most complex, using every CLDR category:

• zero: 0
• one: 1
• two: 2
• few: 3-10
• many: 11-99
• other: 100+, fractions

Testing Your Plural Rules

Always test with these critical numbers per language:

• 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 20, 21, 22, 100, 101

These cover the boundary cases where plural categories change in most languages.