A common error that is driving me nuts!

[curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Tdol

Should a curmudgeon encourage people towards life?

Bah Humbug!

[Ouisch]

Originally Posted by curmudgeon

Bah Humbug!

Let's face it...if some of us got a life outside of the ESL Forum, we'd have people "snucking" all over the place!

[Tdol]

Snucking humbug.

[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.

[Tdol]

There's nothing wrong with that, though you will hear British English speakers, and BrE tends to be the form taught in the EU, use different forms.

[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.