Here ... some bread and cakes for you

[tonyshark]

Hello, everyone!

Here is the sentence:

"Here ... some bread and cakes for you ".

What would you choose IS or ARE ? and why?

 

[emsr2d2]

Hello, everyone!

Here is the a sentence:

"Here ___________ some bread and cakes for you."

What Would you choose IS or ARE no question mark here and why?

Welcome to the forum.

Please note my corrections above.
Using the definite article was wrong because there was no previously mentioned sentence for "the" to refer back to.
When you quote an entire sentence, the full stop goes inside the quotation marks.
You incorrectly put a space before the closing quotation marks (after "you").
If you want to start your main question with "What", you need to write "What would you choose - "is" or "are"?"
We always discourage learners from starting sentences with "and", which is why I combined your two questions into one. I recommend that you discourage your students from doing it too.

Since you're an English teacher, let's start with you telling us which one you would choose and why! Also, tell us if you think there's a third option that would be used in colloquial English.

 

[tonyshark]

Thank you for the detailed corrections. However, I posted here to clarify a grammar point, not to receive a lesson in punctuation. I appreciate high standards, but the tone felt unnecessarily critical. I believe tone matters too, especially among educators. I'd prefer to focus on the question I asked, which I still believe is worth discussing.

Since you asked what I would choose: I believe "Here are some bread and cakes" is grammatically correct, because the subject is a compound of two items joined by "and", and at least one of them – "cakes" – is clearly plural. So regardless of the uncountable noun "bread", the subject as a whole is plural, which requires "are".

That said, the sentence sounds strange to me, and I would probably avoid using it in real-life conversation. However, this exact structure appeared in a grammar test designed for students in China, and I'm trying to understand how to explain it clearly and correctly to non-native learners.

I would genuinely appreciate hearing the opinions of other professionals on how they interpret this construction.

 

[Rover_KE]

I'm glad you appreciate high standards. We correct all mistakes in contributors' posts, and make no apology for doing so.

I agree with your reasons for using 'are', which should be clear enough to your ESL students.

 

[tedmc]

I think the choice of auxiliary verb ("is" or "are") in this case does not depend on whether the nouns are countable or uncountable. It's simply plural for two items.

Pointing out mistakes in a post however minor is not being unnecessarily critical or nitpicking. It's a healthy practice and encourages care in writing good English.

 

[emsr2d2]

Thank you for the detailed corrections. However, I posted here to clarify a grammar point, not to receive a lesson in punctuation. I appreciate high standards, but the tone felt unnecessarily critical. I believe tone matters too, especially among educators.

Those corrections are not only to help you correctly punctuate text but also a lesson to the learners on the site. They will see "English teacher" on your profile and assume that what you write is grammatically correct as well as correctly punctuated, spaced and capitalised.
On this forum, it's never unnecessarily critical to correct errors in a text.

 

[emsr2d2]

It's definitely worth telling your students about BrE's propensity to use "Here's/There's" even when talking about more than one thing. In everyday speech, most Brits would say "Here's some bread and cakes for you".

 

[Rover_KE]

Also answered here.

 

[Skrej]

As mentioned in the other forum, it depends whether you're considering the bread and cakes as separate items, or just one single combination.

 

[Annabel Lee]

"Here ... some bread and cakes for you ".

What would you choose IS or ARE ? and why?

Everybody would choose are, of course, if cakes came first in the compound subject and the verb were not contracted:

Here are some cakes and bread for you.

Still, I'd choose are even with the order you've used, since that is the verb that would be used without inversion:

Some bread and cakes are here for you. --> Here are some bread and cakes for you.