Quote:
Originally Posted by Lenka  What about the word "fauna"?
I've read this sentence just a moment ago: "The megafauna disappear and Paleo-Indians begin to gather plants for food." <= is it also possible to use the verb in singular? |
That's a bit different, as it's a Latin plural (and felt to be such by native speakers of English). The singular would be 'megafaunum', which is
almost non-existent:
megafaunum - Google Search
Among Latin plurals, most are still recognized as plural. Some are hotly disputed (for example,
media); and a few take either a singular or a plural - though there are die-hards who insist on the plural:
"the data is" - Google Search
but
"the data are" - Google Search
"The data is" out-numbers "The data are" by more than 5 to 1 (7,760,000 to 1,440,000), but 1,440,000 is a fairly big number. (And there are big regional differences: for UK pages only, it's nearly 50:50; and I expect some English dialects - Australian, probably, at a guess - favour the plural strongly.)
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