how many languages exist that treat collective nouns as plural? (Split off English Debate)

[.dev11]

my native language is american english. we treat collective nouns as singular. i often see brits treating collective nouns as plural, like this: "the team are good!" this is crazy to me! there's just one team LOL, it's one unit. this includes one government, one company, one brand, one organization, one band, one group; they become one thing

collective nouns are treated as singular in spanish and german, but i'm not sure about other languages. my question seems like a quick google search, but i'm not finding anything relevant. does any other language treat collective nouns as plural, or is it just british english?

no seriously. imagine the 5 power rangers combining their zords to form the mega-zord, but then a brit completely ruins your day saying, "wow! that mega-zord are so cool!" i don't even know why you would say "that" + "are" here, since "that" indicates a singular thing

[rdearman]

After 30 years in England I can honestly say that I have never heard an English person do that.

Edit: also if that is the case Americans treat collective nouns as singular then why did Paul Revere say "The British are coming" and not "The British is coming" ?

[keineAhnung]

I'm not English but I agree it's not something I've ever heard being done in a generalized fashion for all 'collective nouns' like you describe, in any English dialect that I've had experience with (which isn't all of them though, there could be regional dialects doing that for all I know; I know some northern dialects (Yorkshire I think?) of England are known to sometimes normalize saying 'you was' instead of 'you were' for example, so everything's possible), apart from the well-known exception of 'the Police are coming', which sounds more British than American but to which extent I'm not sure.

[Querneus]

After 30 years in England I can honestly say that I have never heard an English person do that.

I hardly have any experience hearing British people talk, but I see it in British writing on occasion at least. For example "blah blah whenever Arsenal score a goal" instead of "scores".

Edit: also if that is the case Americans treat collective nouns as singular then why did Paul Revere say "The British are coming" and not "The British is coming" ?

It's a bit of a fun topic, but basically many demonyms in English are regular countable nouns (one German, two Germans, the Germans are coming; one Brit, two Brits) while others have to be treated as adjectives ("one British", "two French" sound wrong, "two Dutches" sounds very wrong, cf. "one British person/(wo)man, British people") with the nominalized adjective construction available ("the British are coming", cf. "the rich say this, the poor say that").

This is different from the topic of collective nouns taking plural verbs among some or many... British... speakers.

As if this wasn't fun enough, the adjective "great" is for some reason usually pluralized with -s when used as a nominalized adjective: "learn from the greats", "the greats do it differently". But this doesn't apply to the superlative, "the greatest [of all time] do it differently" — we don't say "the greatests" (and I don't feel like you can use this construction with the comparative?).

Grammar.

[rdearman]

After 30 years in England I can honestly say that I have never heard an English person do that.

I hardly have any experience hearing British people talk, but I see it in British writing on occasion at least. For example "blah blah whenever Arsenal score a goal" instead of "scores".

I admit that I'm crap at grammar, but in your example I feel it is correct to use the singular. "Arsenal score a goal" should be singular, because only one team, Arsenal, scored exactly one goal. There is only one ball on the pitch, so you can't score multiple goals at the same time. If the ball goes into the goal it stops play, so even if it rolled out, and you kick it back in again, only one goal was scored. If I had to hazard a guess as to why American's tend to use "scores a goal" would be because in American "football" (where only one person actually uses their foot) you score 6 points for a single goal, so "scores" would make sense because you have added 6 points to the scorecard, whereas in football (where only one person can use their hands) you only get one point and hence only add one point to the scorecard.

I do remember watching The Great One, and they would say things like: "The Oilers score! Gretzky with the score from an assist by Messier." but I can't remember if they typically used score or scores. (I went to see a fight and a hockey game broke out.)

I have noted at Wimbledon they say things like: "Novak Djokovicis 15-Love", but they don't seem to use the word score/scores even if they are getting 15 lovers and double-fault advantages for a deuce, (Whatever the ... that means, tennis makes no sense)

Of course, this theory doesn't hold water when you talk about people who use golf-bats to score poultry related points like, birds, or eagles, or whatever. (Did the winner used to get the prize money in turkeys or chickens or something? Is that why they are so obsessed with poultry? Golf, a long walk ruined.)

I watched some Hurling when I lived in Ireland, and they can score either 1 point or 3 points depending on if it went over the crossbar, or past the defender. I believe they also use the singular score for both 1 point or a 3 point goal. If you don't know what Hurling is, it is a hybrid of field hockey, soccer, rugby and a prison riot.

But I know less about grammar than I do about sports, so I honestly have no clue.

[Kraut]

From my grammar book:

"The class are working on their projects."
"All the staff have left."
"The audience are requested to be in their seats."
etc

focuses on the individuals, if American English can't do this, then it is lacking a useful semantic feature

[Cainntear]

I watched some Hurling when I lived in Ireland, and they can score either 1 point or 3 points depending on if it went over the crossbar, or past the defender. I believe they also use the singular score for both 1 point or a 3 point goal. If you don't know what Hurling is, it is a hybrid of field hockey, soccer, rugby and a prison riot.

It's got literally nothing to do with the number of points scored -- it's 100% collective plural.

The government have blamed the French for the delays at the Channel.
Arsenal are a football team.

etc.

[Cenwalh]

It's got literally nothing to do with the number of points scored -- it's 100% collective plural.

The government have blamed the French for the delays at the Channel.
Arsenal are a football team.

etc.

I (as a Brit) use this structure all the time, and a quick search on the homepage of the BBC's website confirms it's an accepted form in British English, although usage seems mixed.

Some headlines from today's BBC news:
"Russia denies..." (singular)
"Girls Aloud [a music group] race for bandmate..." (plural)
"Ukraine says..." (singular)
"GB win bronze in men's 4x100m relay" (plural)
"New-look GB team wins 4x100m relay bronze" (singular, and yes that's about the exact same group and race, a few stories below, with conflicting treatment of the collective plural).

I hope this settles the debate on whether or not this is a thing, so somebody can answer OP's question, which is an interesting one.

Edit: I've just found the BBC's style guide information for this, which seems all over the place!

collective nouns

denote groups (eg: group, crew etc). Our policy is that they should take singular verbs as much as possible. Consistency is important. Do not say eg: "The jury is considering its verdict. They will spend the night in a hotel." However, couple and pair can sound odd in the singular so it’s OK to use them as plurals. Family can be either - judge according to context.

Sports teams are plural (eg: Manchester United have beaten Liverpool), but clubs are singular (eg: Manchester United has provided another bonus for its shareholders).

The police are treated as plural (eg: Police say they are looking for three men), but individual forces are singular (eg The Metropolitan Police says there is no need to panic).

Press and public should be treated as singular, but rewording may be advisable (replacing eg: "The press arrived soon afterwards. It had lots of questions" with Journalists arrived soon afterwards. They had lots of questions.)

[rdearman]

I split the topic in order to keep the other question clear.

[Querneus]

Regarding the question asked in the opening post, a native speaker of French informs me that:

French has one phrase that does this
"la plupart" (the majority, most of them)
"la plupart veulent rester"
(vs "la majorité veut rester")

"la plupart veulent rester", literally "the majority want to rest", with veulent being a plural verb, but majorité clearly a singular noun (it takes the singular article la). "veut" is the singular form of the verb. He then adds:

though this is a fairly recent and I suspect arbitrary fixation of the formal language
19th century French admitted both singular and plural verbs after either "la majorité" or "la plupart"
(of course 19th century French was fine with proximity-based agreement)

I think another candidate example might be the names of many ethnic groups in standard Arabic, e.g. عرب `arab 'Arabs', ترك‎ turk 'Turks', روم‎ ruum 'Byzantines, (ancient) Romans'. These are sometimes identified as "collectives" in dictionaries, they arguably look like singular nouns (though because of the nature of Arabic's irregular "broken" plurals this isn't entirely certain), and often have collective plural forms of their own, indicating multiple collectives or great numbers of people (عروب `uruub, أتراك ´atraak, أروام ´arwaam for the three examples). Their actual singulars (or "singulatives") are formed with the suffix ــي -ii. And most importantly, other words around them can take plural agreement for them, at least for some of them some of the time, as in this note from Wiktionary on عرب `arab:

According to Lane's Arabic Lexicon (entry عرب, book I, p. 2045), عَرَب‎ (ʿarab) is of the feminine gender. However, since the word is a collective noun with human referents, it is possible for it to be treated as either a masculine plural or a feminine singular noun. For example, the Wikipedia entry has الْعَرَب الْبَاقِيَة الَّذِين (al-ʿarab al-bāqiya allaḏīn ..., “the remaining Arabs who ...”) with بَاقِيَة‎ (bāqiya, “remaining”), a feminine singular, but الَّذِين‎ (allaḏīn, “who”), a masculine plural.