CLDR Plural Rules Explorer

Locale (CLDR plural rules)

Number n

Integer count 1

Live Result

rule: n == 1 → "one"

Category for n

one

Share of 0–100

2.0%

Categories used

2 / 6

Sample string

1 file

How it works

Almost every language needs more than English's "1 item / 2 items" split. The Unicode CLDR plural rules standard defines up to six grammatical categories — zero, one, two, few, many, other — and a deterministic boolean rule per language that maps any count n to exactly one category:

Russian:  one:  n%10==1 && n%100!=11
          few:  n%10 in [2,4] && n%100 not in [12,14]
          many: n%10==0 || n%10 in [5,9] || n%100 in [11,14]
          other: everything else (fractions)

Arabic:   zero: n==0   one: n==1   two: n==2
          few:  n%100 in [3,10]
          many: n%100 in [11,99]
          other: everything else

Welsh:    zero:0  one:1  two:2  few:3  many:6  other: rest
Japanese: other (no plural distinction at all)

A mobile app that hard-codes n + " item(s)" is only correct for English. Real i18n frameworks (ICU MessageFormat, Android <plurals>, iOS .stringsdict) look up the rule for the user's locale, evaluate it against n, and select the matching translated template — e.g. Russian needs four separately-translated strings for "file(s)" where English needs two.

Locale buttons — switch the active CLDR rule set; the 101-point instanced grid recolors instantly by category.
n slider / Random — pick the integer being tested; the matching cube in the 3D grid pulses and a beam connects it to the legend.
Auto-cycle — sweeps n from 0 to 100 continuously so you can watch which categories are rare (e.g. Arabic's "two" fires for exactly one value) versus common.

This is the actual algorithm shipped inside every major i18n runtime — not a metaphor for it.

n = 1

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