I've always wondered why Czech words have one plural for 2, 3, and 4, and another for 5 and up. Does anyone know where this comes from or why this is so? Do other Slavic languages have this? I read once about Ancient Greek having something called the "dual" as opposed to singular and plural, and I wonder if this is related. It's just a curiosity I've always had. I remember being about 10 years old and about to fall asleep, and this amazing realization came to me! I actually woke my mother up to tell her about my "discovery"!!
It is'nt another plural but another case. Numbers 2, 3 and 4 govern the nominative, numbers 5, 6 and up (excluding some compound numbers ending with 1, 2, 3 or 4) govern the genitive. This genitive construction works in analogous way as "of" in English "a lot of ...". That means the strictly literal translation is: jeden muž = one man dva muži = two men tři muži = three men čtyři muži = four men pět mužů = five of men šest mužů = six of men ... sto mužů = hundred of men This all is rather problem of perception of quantity (of mathematics) than a linguistic problem. Small numbers work as articles (no wonder that a lot of articles originated in numbers) and therefor they have very often different forms for different genders. Big numbers work as abstract characterization of quantity. Similar threshold of perception of big numbers is common in a lot of languages (see e.g. French "trois", "très" and Latin "trans", that all is cognate). Oh, yes, and the dual. We have it also but the modern usage is very limited - see this.
Very, very interesting!! I never knew that. Thanks for the information - as I said, I've always been curious about this, and this makes it very clear.
