Polish people are all virgins?

[pne]

I was looking for information on how to inflect nouns after numerals in Polish - specifically, whether numbers such as 31, 32, 33, 34, 35 cause numbers to inflect like after 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or not.

So I googled for people announcing their age ("mam [number] [years]") to see what form the word for "years" took.

And when I type in "mam [number]", Google autocomplete (or whatever it's called) helpfully suggests, for example, "mam 21 lat" but "mam 22/23/24 lata" and then again "mam 25 lat". So -1 doesn't make it use the nominative singular as with just "1", but -2/-3/-4 does use the nominative plural as with the paucal 2/3/4. And then -5 uses the genitive plural as with 5, as does -1.

But that's not the whole story: after typing (say) "mam 23 " (with the space at the end), Google usually suggested not merely "mam 23 lata" but the top suggestions usually were "mam ... lat(a) i jestem prawiczkiem/dziewicą" (I'm ... years old and I'm a virgin) - sometimes even the #1 suggestion! (Well, and also "... i jestem sama".)

I wonder whether that's an artifact of the type of situations where people typically use the wording "I'm ... years old", or whether it says something about Polish society....

Comments

[pauamma]

Related to your question about inflections with numbers: http://code.livejournal.org/trac/livejournal/browser/trunk/cgi-bin/LJ/Lang.pm#L955 (IIRC, it was reviewed by a native speaker of Polish)

[pne]

Ah, thanks!

male virginity and loneliness in Poland

[flamenco108]

Well, hello again.

Your research should be completed to be more trustworthy... So, I checked the numbers between 20 and 25 and what we get about Polish society?

mam 20
mam 20 lat i jestem prawiczkiem (and I'm a male virgin)
mam 20 lat i jestem sama (and I'm alone)

As you said. This means, that Polish girls are ready to make a couple at their 20, but their contemporary age colleagues are... Well, not ready.
BUT!
Asking about 21 number, you can get

mam 21
mam 21 lat i jestem prawiczkiem (and I'm a virgin)
mam 21 lat i jestem w ciąży (and I'm pregnant)

Which means, that boys are still not ready (sic!), but girls are in their first pregnancy. Pregnancy lasts for 9 months, so, let's go to the next year, where when you ask about 22 it gets back to lonely women

mam 22 lata i jestem sama (and I'm alone)

And a year after pregnancy comes back:

mam 23 lata i jestem w ciąży (and I'm pregnant)
mam 23 lata i nie mam chłopaka (and I don't have a boyfriend)

Look! No complaints from male part of the society. However, at 24 the male virginity comes back:

mam 24 lata i jestem prawiczkiem (and I'm a virgin)
mam 24 punkty karne (and I have 24 penalty points on my driver licence)

This shows us, that Polish 24 years old men are in two groups: not-ready (sic!) and ready too much.

And finally on 25

mam 25 lat i nie mam pracy (and I'm unemployed)
mam 25 lat i jestem sama (and I'm alone)

Which is typical for our reality now. Men! They are always male-shovinistic-eternally-unemployed-pigs! Why to be surprized, that our demography is crushing down?

That's why in last 5 years the 2mln of our young people changed their fatherland to other countries, usually in Europe...

Merry Christmas!

Re: male virginity and loneliness in Poland

[pne]

Thanks for re-doing the research, and especially for the translations! And I enjoyed your commentary :)