# Slovenian: Plural instead of dual for parts of the body



## dihydrogen monoxide

This question considers Slovene language I hope someone can clarify the origin.
Slovene among few other languages still uses dual which in colloquial speech is rather disappearing. Why does Slovene language use plural when talking about legs and arms, when every human has two legs and two arms and therefore dual should be used.


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## sokol

My Slovenian teacher has explained it like this: these body parts are 'natural duals', they do not need the dual because it is obvious that there are two of them.

But I don't know if this is an accurate summary or may be of help here.

Anyway, my Slovenian Grammar by Bajec/ Kolarič/ Rupel (an ancient one: 1956) states the following (p. 87):
"Kadar govorimo splošno o delih telesa ali o stvareh, ki jih imamo po dvoje, jih rabimo v množini, le kadar hočemo poudariti obojnost, jih rabimo v dvojini. Če rečem: >Tu sta _dva čevlja,*)_ čigava sta?<, bo vsakdo mislil na dva izgubljena čevlj, ki nista par."
*) This is dual form.
That is, to give a short summary for those who can't read Slovenian: body parts or also things to do with body parts - like shoes in this example - are used with plural; if dual is used with them every Slovenian immediately would think - with the example of shoes - that you are speaking for example of two shoes which someone had forgotten, and most importantly two shoes _that do not match,_ that are not a pair.


So according to this grammar you do not use dual with things that come in pairs in Slovenian because this would be misunderstood as a "not-matching-two-things" (with body parts like eyes or hands dual therefore probably could sound ridiculous - or probably fit into a horror story, that I don't know, but you probably see what I mean: two eyes "that do not match" ...).

That just out of books; as you are a native speaker you'll surely have your own opinion on that one. 

(By the way, in Slavic languages where dual was LOST on the contrary those natural duals sometimes have old frozen duals; that's the case - if I remember correctly - for Czech 'eyes', or 'ears', or both, probably someone with more knowledge on that one could comment.)


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## trance0

I wouldn't agree with the point that dual is disappearing from colloquial Slovene, at least not generally. It fully depends on geographical location or on the origin of the speaker and how his/her dialect influences one's speaking habits. For Ljubljana region I believe I can safely say that dual is still quite consistently used in colloquial speech at least most of the time. Inconsistency can be found mainly with nouns of female gender, where strange mix of plural and dual often appears and what I find particularly interesting is the innovation in colloquial Slovene in some regions, where a new ending is used with first person dual verbs for female subjects(-ve instead of -va which is the only possible ending in the literature language). If I compare the use of dual in my native region close to Croatian border(Krško), dual is used consistently with all masculine nouns and with most neuter ones, but almost never with female ones. As far as the topic is concerned, I agree with the explanations of d.-h..


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## werrr

sokol said:


> (By the way, in Slavic languages where dual was LOST on the contrary those natural duals sometimes have old frozen duals; that's the case - if I remember correctly - for Czech 'eyes', or 'ears', or both, probably someone with more knowledge on that one could comment.)


Yes, Czech uses dual for numerals of two (two, both) and pairwise parts of body (eyes, ears, shoulders, breast...).


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## TriglavNationalPark

sokol said:


> (By the way, in Slavic languages where dual was LOST on the contrary those natural duals sometimes have old frozen duals; that's the case - if I remember correctly - for Czech 'eyes', or 'ears', or both, probably someone with more knowledge on that one could comment.)


 


werrr said:


> Yes, Czech uses dual for numerals of two (two, both) and pairwise parts of body (eyes, ears, shoulders, breast...).


 
I've often heard people express surprise that Slovene treats dual body parts in exactly the opposite way than a number of other Slavic languages (which, unlike Slovene, don't have the true grammatical dual, but use a remnant of dual for body parts). How does Lusatian Sorbian, the only other Slavic language with the full grammatical dual, handle this?

BTW, I wouldn't say that the dual is disappearing from Slovene. It was already gone from many Slovene dialects when intensified codification reintroduced it in the 19th century. Therefore, it's probably more a case of an incomplete reintroduction (to colloquial dialects) than disappearance.


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## zigaramsak

sokol said:


> Anyway, my Slovenian Grammar by Bajec/ Kolarič/ Rupel (an ancient one: 1956) states the following (p. 87):
> "Kadar govorimo splošno o delih telesa ali o stvareh, ki jih imamo po dvoje, jih rabimo v množini, le kadar hočemo poudariti obojnost, jih rabimo v dvojini. Če rečem: >Tu sta _dva čevlja,*)_ čigava sta?<, bo vsakdo mislil na dva izgubljena čevlj, ki nista par."
> *) This is dual form.
> That is, to give a short summary for those who can't read Slovenian: body parts or also things to do with body parts - like shoes in this example - are used with plural; if dual is used with them every Slovenian immediately would think - with the example of shoes - that you are speaking for example of two shoes which someone had forgotten, and most importantly two shoes _that do not match,_ that are not a pair.


 
I have no idea whatsoever, but your Slovenian Grammar does seem to have a point. If somebody said he had found "dva čevlja (two shoes)", it would sound odd enough to me that I probably wouldn't think of a matching pair at first. Even for eyes, for example, if I heard "it was watching me 'z dvema očesoma' (with two eyes)", I might really think in an appropriate context that the thing actually had three eyes... But it's possible that such a thought would occur to me only because of the peculiarity of the phrase, e.g. hearing "dva čevlja", would probably make me conclude: "This is strange, what does he actually mean by that, this is not a normal way of talking about shoes, so something must be wrong, probably it's not a pair..."

I think it's more a consequence of the fact that the plural form is reserved for pairs and the dual is therefore free for other meanings and not the other way around (i.e. I don't think we use the plural form because the dual is reserved for separate things).


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## dihydrogen monoxide

It's not disappearing, perhaps this is not the right word, it's rather not used that often in colloquial speech,in fact we can't foretell or say if it will stay or if it will go. However, I do hear people use plural when in fact dual should be used and I tend to hear that often. But my opinion is that dual will stay in Slovene because of the schools that will be teaching dual to new generations and because of the grammar of the Slovene language.


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## trance0

I believe the codified version of the dual in Slovene is here to stay. In colloquial language however its future is less certain. I think it will be at least partially preserved in many city speeches for many years to come.


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## sokol

zigaramsak said:


> I think it's more a consequence of the fact that the plural form is reserved for pairs and the dual is therefore free for other meanings and not the other way around (i.e. I don't think we use the plural form because the dual is reserved for separate things).



What about the following: "Dual means _separate _things, therefore no dual but plural for things (body parts) that naturally come in twos; therefore difference in meaning if a dual is used for things that usually come in pairs."

Would this be something that you could subscribe to?

(As for the future of dual I had the impression that teachers - I had two who were born and raised in Slovenia, also one Carinthian Slovene - put very much effort into teaching dual, and as also the Slovenian ones did this I think that a) it is probably necessary to put so much weight on dual in order that Slovene students will pay attention = meaning that many Slovene students sometimes use dual incosistently and b) that the insistence on dual is very much appreciated by all Slovenes whom I have asked about, that includes Slovenes both from Slovenia proper and from Carinthia.
Conclusion therefore, as far as I am concerned: dual will stay; it is and will continue to be teached, and it is and most likely will continue to be accepted by the population. I even had the impression that dual is something like a national symbol, for many Slovenes - and Carinthians too.)


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## zigaramsak

sokol said:


> What about the following: "Dual means _separate _things, therefore no dual but plural for things (body parts) that naturally come in twos; therefore difference in meaning if a dual is used for things that usually come in pairs."
> 
> Would this be something that you could subscribe to?


 
Yes, that looks quite a good explanation to me.

As far as the future of the dual is concerned: who knows... Maybe short messages and private emails are the best indicator for what will go first. I think many other things are higher on the list than the dual. On the other hand things can just come back unexpectedly and sometimes I see constructions in newspapers for which I thought they were lost already (like past conditional).


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## janecito

I agree that Slovenian dual shouldn't be feared for. As it was already mentioned, it might be less present in colloquial language of some regions and it is also more stable with some words (like masculine) than with the others (feminine). While it is very common to hear people say things like:

To sta dv*e* moj*e* najboljš*e* prijateljic*e*. (correct would be: To sta dv*e* moj*i* najboljš*i* prijateljic*i*.)

I don't think anyone would say:

To sta dv*a* moj*i* najboljš*i* prijatelj*i*. (the correct and the only used variant: To sta dv*a* moj*a* najboljš*a* prijatelj*a*.)

Maybe it's a tendency to unify the ending. With masculine the numeral "*dva*" ends in *-a* but also all the dual endings in nominative end in *-a*, so there's no problem. But with feminine we have a discrepancy: "*dve*" ends in *-e*, but the feminine dual ending is *-i*.

 An interesting thing happens also with neuter nouns. It is quite common to hear thing like:

*  dva mesta, dva kolesa, dva vprašanja ...*

 instead of the correct forms:

*  dve mesti, dve kolesi, dve vprašanji*

 I don't know whether it's a case of pluralization (*mesta*, *kolesa*, *vprašanja* are plural forms of these words) + subsequent adaptation of the numeral, or is it a case of masculinization („*dva -a*“ is a 'masculine' way of forming dual.)

 And apart from what trance0 has already mentioned regarding the *-va* vs. *-ve* verbal ending, there is another innovative verbal dual ending that one can come across: *-ma*. It looks like a hybrid between the dual ending *-va *and the plural *-mo*. I think it's regional too, but I wouldn't really be able to say which region it belongs to...

 Letos *boma* (= bo*va*)pogosteje prihajala na obisk.
 O tem se veliko *pogovarjama* (= pogovarja*va*).


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## trance0

In Posavje region this hybrid ending "-ma" for verbs in dual is casual, "-va" ending sounds too formal, while "-ve" ending sounds very strange to someone from my region.


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## zigaramsak

janecito said:


> Maybe it's a tendency to unify the ending.
> 
> I don't know whether it's a case of pluralization (*mesta*, *kolesa*, *vprašanja* are plural forms of these words) + subsequent adaptation of the numeral, or is it a case of masculinization („*dva -a*“ is a 'masculine' way of forming dual.)


 
I totally agree. For some reason we just don't like a couple of feminine and neuter endings in colloquial speech - and even that doesn't apply for all regions in the same way and it will take another generation or two to loose them completely - if they don't become more popular again for some reason in all that time. Unfortunately these endings make the difference between the dual and the plural form, but the whole concept of dual is still far more than a couple of endings and there is no sign the other features will disappear too. Saying "onadva govorijo" instead of "onadva govorita" would strike me as hard as "they is talking" or something like that in English.


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## trance0

I found an interesting page about characteristics of Slovene dual:http://www.slav.uni-sofia.bg/LiliJournal/spring2007/DergancA_Spring2007.html .


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