Trouble with subjects

[bleiva]

Hello! I was asked to post a new thread with this question because I used one thread to ask two different things My question is the following:

"The most important thing to me is/are my friends." I'm having trouble identifying the subject, is it "friends" or "the most important thing"? (which is why I don't really know if I should use "is" or "are")

The same has happened to me before, for example with sentences such as "All they talk about is animals". Before, I'd use "are", but then I was told the subject was "all" and so I got confused with the sentence above.

Thank you

[Raymott]

Hello! I was asked to post a new thread with this question because I used one thread to ask two different things My question is the following:

"The most important thing to me is/are my friends." I'm having trouble identifying the subject, is it "friends" or "the most important thing"? (which is why I don't really know if I should use "is" or "are")

The same has happened to me before, for example with sentences such as "All they talk about is animals". Before, I'd use "are", but then I was told the subject was "all" and so I got confused with the sentence above.

Thank you

Use the verb which agrees with the first phrase, ie. the subject which occurs before the verb:
The most important thing is friends", but "Friends are the most important thing."

"All they talk about is animals", "Animals are all they talk about."
If it helps, think of "All they talk about ..." as "The only thing they talk about ..."

[bleiva]

Yes! It helped a lot! Really, thank you so, so much!! :)