[MikeNewYork]

Originally Posted by sallyhoudongmei

in fact, such problem is common in English teaching in china, we often regard the amount of money as a whole,it is the same with length and weight, in such cases, we should use singular:there is twenty pounds/there is a hundred pound. or there is ten metres. And about the the collective noun "team" (same as family, police, cow...), we use singular when we regard it as a whole: The family goes to Beijing every year.(that indicates the family as whole go to Beijing). cf: The family get their presents from Father Christmas. (the family here indicates all the members/each member of the family, so we regard it as a plural. Except the special occassion mentioned above, in other case, the predicate must be decided by the following real subject. This is what the grammar book teach me.

That is basically the way it is in American English.