Well, I never expected so many responses in so few hours. Thanks particularly for the "welcomes"s.
@ Mariner: I guess I have a formal take on english usage - while it suits me!
@ MikeNewYork: glad you agree
@ Humble: Thanks, and I think it's safe to get out of your burrow, nothing exploded.
@ Rewboss:
Thankyou, too. by the way you wrote:
Quote:
Originally Posted by rewboss  .....
Part of the problem is that there is often more to this than meets the eye. Certainly, you would prefer "There are twenty pounds", as "twenty" is a multiplicity, but what of: "There is/are a hundred"? After all, how many hundreds are there? Why, one, of course! But surely 100 is a big number? |
Whilst we're obviously in picky-city on this topic, may I say that I wonder whether the senctence "There is/are a hundred." could be considered a whole sentence. A Hundred what? Bananas, pound coins, pound note..?
Just considering the monetary examples here, I would favour:
There are a hundred pound coins [on the table].
There is a hundred pound note [in my pocket].
These would be my choices, as we have many coins, but only one note. I can imagine someone saying "There's a hundred." as a complete sentence, but it sounds like informal language in which a sentence has been foreshortened out of laziness.
Incidentally Rewboss, that was an interesting point about word order. Indeed, "dog bites man" and "man bites dog" mean very different things. But, as you rightly pointed out, in other languages they use cases to tell what's going on. In german they have 4 cases, and use changes of word order for stylistic purposes. It reminds me of when I read a newspaper article about a typhoon near Hong Kong. I'll try to paraphrase it, and then translate,
"Die Insel hat der Taifun glücklicherweise nicht zerstört."
Word for word,
"The island had the typhoon luckily not destructed.", but actually meant
"The typhoon had luckily not destructed the island."
Reading it and taking it into my english head I interpreted it the first way (incorrectly), which made me very confused - I couldn't imagine how an island could or could not distruct a typhoon!
HAD THAT BEEN what the journalist wanted to say, rather than writing,
"Die Insel hat der Taifun glücklicherweise nicht zerstört." (typhoon | destructs | island)
he would have written,
"Die Insel hat den Taifun glücklicherweise nicht zerstört." (island | destructs | typhoon)
One letter difference! ('den' instead of 'der'). 'Den' is masculine accusative, whereas 'der' is masculine nominative. That tiny change alters whether the typhoon is the object or subject of the verb.
'Die' incidentally is the feminine form of nominative AND accusative, and hence stays the same for 'Insel' (island) in both cases.
Sorry. This site is about english, not german, but I thought that I would throw that in for comparative purposes.