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| 115943 |
Singular or plural?
I have heard many times Englishmen saying,for example, "England were extremely good today" when they talk about a football team. Is it correct? If it is, why do you use the verb "to be" in plural? Do you refer England in this case as a group of many people or what? Are there other similar cases? Thank you for an explanation.
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Language pair: Finnish; English
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| 115979 |
Re:Singular or plural?
Hi, I'm American, but the English do that sort of thing as they are referring to the team, as a group of players. "England (the footballers, plural) were very good...
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Language pair: Finnish; English
This is a reply to message # 115943
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| 116024 |
Re:Re:Singular or plural?
Thank you very much for your answer. Just as I thought. My knowledge of English is from the 70´s and 80`s and I´m totally confused with the new vocabulary, especially technology. Do Americans say "cell phone" and Englishmen "mobile phone"? How do you call the written message which you send by mobile phone? When you leave a spoken message is it a voicemail? I´m grateful for an answer. I´m sorry that I can´t help you with your "rubbish problem". Kiitos!
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Language pair: Finnish; English
This is a reply to message # 115979
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| 116070 |
Re:Re:Re:Singular or plural?
Englishmen say mobile phone and Americans cell phone. The message is a text for English people and (I think) an SMS for Americans, but I'm not sure!! And you're right, a voicemail is when you leave a message.
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Language pair: Finnish; English
This is a reply to message # 116024
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| 116221 |
Re:Re:Re:Re:Singular or plural?
I'm not sure what the English call their written messages, but in The United States those messages are called "texts" as well.
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Language pair: English; Finnish
This is a reply to message # 116070
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| 116224 |
Re:Singular or plural?
Mojn Susanna,
As far as I know, there are two ways to refer to collective nouns (e.g. group, family, or team). You can use the singular form if you refer to them as a whole. For example, you can say "the team IS going to practice in the afternoon." This is talking about the team as one body or entity.
But sometimes if you refer to the individual members of the team, you can use the plural verb. For example, the clause "the team are not getting along" means that the individual members of the team ARE not getting along. As to why the English use this form, I do not know exactly why. But I am guessing it is a kind of informal, everyday language, or maybe they use this form when they refer to the individual members rather than the team as a whole.
Hope this helps :-)
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Language pair: Filipino (Tagalog); English
This is a reply to message # 115943
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