German: Unit Grammar Info

Grammatical Forms

Unit Inflections, Phase 1: The end goal is to add full case and gender support for formatted units. During Phase 1, a limited number of locales and units of measurement are being handled in CLDR v38, so that we can work kinks out of the process before expanding to all units for all locales.

This chart shows grammatical information available for certain unit and/or power patterns. These patterns are also illustrated with a Formatted Sample that combine the patterns with sample numbers and case minimal pair patterns. For example, “… für {0} …” is a case minimal pair pattern that requires the placeholder {0} to be in the accusative case in German. By inserting into a minimal pair pattern, it is easier to ensure that the original unit and/or power patterns are correctly inflected.

Notes

• We don't have the cross-product of minimal pairs for both case and plural forms, so the case minimal pair pattern might not be correct for the row’s plural category, especially in the nominative.
• Translators often have difficulties with the the minimal pair patterns, since they are transcreations not translations. The Hindi minimal pair patterns for case and gender have been discarded because they were incorrectly translated.
• We don't expect translators to supply minimal pair patterns that are natural for any kind of placeholder: for example, it is probably not typical to use the vocative with 3.2 meters! So look at the Formatted Sample as an aid for helping to see the context for grammatical inflections, but one that has limitations.

Table of Contents

1. Grammatical Features
2. Minimal Pairs
3. Unit Case and Gender Info
4. Unit Power Components

Grammatical Features

The following lists the available information about grammatical features for this locale. Current information is only for nominal forms. Where a Usage is present other than “general”, that means that a subset of the grammatical features are relevant to that Usage. For example, Feature=grammaticalGender and Usage=units might omit an ‘animate’ gender. For the meanings of the values, see LDML Grammatical Features.

Minimal Pairs

This table has the minimal pairs used to test the appropriateness of different values.

Unit Case and Gender Info

This table has rows contains unit forms appropriate for different grammatical cases and plural forms. Each plural form has a sample value such as (1.2) or (2). That value is used with the localized unit pattern to form a formatted measure, such as “2,0 Stunden”. That formatted measure is in turn substituted into a case minimal pair pattern to get the Formatted Sample. The Gender column is informative; it just supplies the supplied gender for the unit.

• For clarity, conversion values are supplied for non-metric units. For more information, see Unit Conversions.

Unit Power Components

This table shows the square (power2) and cubic (power3) patterns, which may vary by case, gender, and plural forms. Each gender is illustrated with a unit where possible, such as (second) or (meter). Each plural category is illustrated with a unit where possible, such as (1) or (1.2). The patterns are first supplied, and then combined with the samples and case minimal pair patterns in the next Formatted Sample column.