Numbers: Singular VS. Plural

Grammatical number is a category that distinguishes a count of the noun. English has two categories: Singular (only one) and Plural (not one). Other languages such as Iloko have an additional category, Dual (just two or a pair), but it only occurs in the first person dual pronoun, i.e. "we two".

In software, texts in the original English use the plural forms in many instances.

Iloko nouns can be inflected for the plural number in a number of ways.

• The first is using the plural form of the noun marker, e.g. dagiti, kadagiti, and the demonstratives, e.g. dagitoy, dagidiay, etc.
• The second method is to reduplicate (CVC) the first syllable of the root, e.g. ramit, ramramit.
• The third method is specific to nouns for people and doesn't have a pattern. I will leave this one out for the time being.

Sometimes, the first and the second or third methods co-occur (e.g. dagiti ramramit). But, when localizing into Iloko several things should be considered when applying the plural and matching the English text.

Space
Space is a main consideration. Text might be truncated because no enough space was anticipated for anything longer. Where space is limited, do not pluralize the Iloko noun. These situations would be menus or status bar texts. When in doubt, check it in the actual application. It may be necessary to use the pluralized form for clarity. Using the plural marker resembles Tagalog localization and takes up space, e.g. "Mga File", "Mga Details", and it does not really add to the intelligibility of the text. In fact, it looks like a calque or a kludge to shoehorn an English style upon a different language.

If space is not an issue and full sentences and phrases are present such as dialog boxes or documentation, use the plural noun marker for general pluralization. Only use the morphological plural if the sense of the sentence or phrase lends itself to the idea of distribution, i.e. "each file".