>In many old languages the grammatical behavior of the first few numbers can be different between themselves
Not even old languages, in many languages today (notably slavic) nouns decline differently with "1", "2", "3", "4" and say "5".
In many languages, including existing ones (Lithuanian, Irish and Slovenian come to mind) there exists a concept of a grammatical number "dual", in addition to singular and plural.
Not even old languages, in many languages today (notably slavic) nouns decline differently with "1", "2", "3", "4" and say "5".
Hence a wonderful piece of Soviet humour: A factory needs 5 fireplace pokers, but none of the workers knows the correct plural form for 5 fireplace pokers; not wanting to appear ignorant when they send their request to management, they request "3 fireplace pokers and 2 more". Some months later they receive the fireplace pokers with a note saying "here are 4 fireplace pokers and 1 more" -- because management didn't know the word either!
i'm a native russian speaker (though i have been living in an english-speaking country for a while), yet it took me a few moments, and i compulsively consulted wiktionary to check myself:
"five fireplace-pokers"
would be "пять кочерёг", marked as 'irregular' in the table.
Not even old languages, in many languages today (notably slavic) nouns decline differently with "1", "2", "3", "4" and say "5".
In many languages, including existing ones (Lithuanian, Irish and Slovenian come to mind) there exists a concept of a grammatical number "dual", in addition to singular and plural.