Plural Forms & ICU

Different languages handle pluralization differently. English has two forms (one item / many items), but Russian has four, Arabic has six, and Chinese has none. Entri uses ICU Message Format to express these rules in a single string that works across all languages.

ICU Message Format basics

ICU (International Components for Unicode) is the industry standard for complex message formatting. It uses a {variable, type, ...options} syntax embedded in your strings.

Plurals

{count, plural, one {# item} other {# items}}

The # symbol is replaced with the value of count. The categories (one, other) follow CLDR plural rules for each language.

Select

Use select to branch on a non-numeric variable, such as grammatical gender:

{gender, select, male {He liked this} female {She liked this} other {They liked this}}

Ordinals

Use selectordinal for rank-style numbers:

{rank, selectordinal, one {#st place} two {#nd place} few {#rd place} other {#th place}}

CLDR plural categories

The Unicode CLDR defines up to six plural categories per language:

Category	Meaning
`zero`	Exactly zero (or rule-based zero)
`one`	Singular form
`two`	Dual form (some languages only)
`few`	Small numbers (language-specific)
`many`	Large numbers (language-specific)
`other`	Default / catch-all (required)

Not all languages use all categories. The other category is always required as the fallback.

Language examples

English
French
Russian
Arabic
Japanese / Chinese

English uses only one and other.

{count, plural,
  one   {# item found}
  other {# items found}
}

count	Output
0	0 items found
1	1 item found
2	2 items found
100	100 items found

French treats 0 and 1 as singular (one). Numbers 2 and above use other.

{count, plural,
  one   {# élément trouvé}
  other {# éléments trouvés}
}

count	Output
0	0 élément trouvé
1	1 élément trouvé
2	2 éléments trouvés

Russian uses one, few, and other, with complex modulo rules.

{count, plural,
  one   {# товар}
  few   {# товара}
  many  {# товаров}
  other {# товара}
}

count	Rule	Output
1, 21, 31	`one`	1 товар
2–4, 22–24	`few`	2 товара
5–20, 25–30	`many`	5 товаров

Arabic has the most plural forms: zero, one, two, few, many, and other.

{count, plural,
  zero  {لا عناصر}
  one   {عنصر واحد}
  two   {عنصران}
  few   {# عناصر}
  many  {# عنصرًا}
  other {# عنصر}
}

East Asian languages have no plural distinction — all numbers use other.

{count, plural,
  other {# 件のアイテム}
}

In Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and similar languages, only the other category is needed.

Nesting: plurals inside select

ICU rules can be nested to handle combinations:

{gender, select,
  male   {{count, plural, one {He found # result} other {He found # results}}}
  female {{count, plural, one {She found # result} other {She found # results}}}
  other  {{count, plural, one {They found # result} other {They found # results}}}
}

Deeply nested ICU expressions can be difficult for translators to work with. Consider simplifying by splitting into separate keys when nesting goes beyond two levels.

Entri editor support

The Entri translation editor provides dedicated input fields for each plural category required by the target language. Translators never need to write ICU syntax manually — the editor shows the appropriate form fields (e.g., one, few, other for Russian) and assembles the final ICU string automatically. For AI translation, Entri recognizes ICU plural patterns and generates all required plural forms for the target language in a single operation.

Using ICU in your codebase

ICU is supported by popular i18n libraries:

Library	Platform	ICU support
`react-i18next`	React	Via `i18next-icu` plugin
`FormatJS / react-intl`	React	Native
`Lingui`	React	Native
`vue-i18n`	Vue	Native
`Angular i18n`	Angular	Native
`Flutter intl`	Flutter (ARB)	Native

File format compatibility

ICU message format is stored as a plain string in your locale files. Any format that supports arbitrary string values — json-flat, json-nested, yaml, po, arb — can hold ICU strings without modification. The ICU parsing happens at runtime in your i18n library.

{
  "item_count": "{count, plural, one {# item} other {# items}}",
  "welcome": "Welcome, {name}!"
}

Getting Started

CLI

Integrations

Concepts

Open source

Plural Forms & ICU

ICU Message Format basics

Plurals

Select

Ordinals

CLDR plural categories

Language examples

Nesting: plurals inside select

Entri editor support

Using ICU in your codebase

File format compatibility

​ICU Message Format basics

​Plurals

​Select

​Ordinals

​CLDR plural categories

​Language examples

​Nesting: plurals inside select

​Entri editor support

​Using ICU in your codebase

​File format compatibility

ICU Message Format basics

Plurals

Select

Ordinals

CLDR plural categories

Language examples

Nesting: plurals inside select

Entri editor support

Using ICU in your codebase

File format compatibility