troje

Troje is a collective numeral used in several Slavic languages to denote a group of three people. It functions as a determiner or pronoun that treats three persons as a unit, rather than listing them individually. In most languages that use troje, its primary usage is with human nouns, and it often carries a sense of a small or informal group.

Languages and usage: In Polish, troje is used with human nouns to refer to three people or three children, for example troje ludzi or troje dzieci. In Russian, troye (трое) is the standard form for referring to three people, such as трое друзей. In Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, and Slovenian, troje commonly accompanies nouns referring to people, such as troje djece or troje ljudi; its use is frequent in formal or narrative contexts. The exact form and inflection differ by language, and troje is typically not used for counting non-human objects.

Relation to other numerals: Troje is part of a broader Slavic system of collective numerals that include dvojе (two), troje (three), and other variants, which differ from the basic cardinal numerals (tri). This system often interacts with gender, animacy, and noun class, with rules that vary across languages and contexts.

Overview: As a linguistic feature, troje highlights how some Slavic languages treat small groups of people as a unit. Its usage is most common with animate nouns and tends to appear in more formal, literary, or narrative styles, complementing the standard numerical forms.