Job Discussion Forums

[Moore]

Can you say... "United goes through to the next round", or does it have to be "United go through..". "Lincoln wins at home" or must it be "Lincoln win at home" ?
Can you ever refer to a football team as singular, or must it be plural. Here in Spain a team is singular, wheras as far as I can gather in the UK it is plural. Is it like the word "government" which can be singular or plural, depending on how you look at it...or am I wrong about that too?
Any ideas?

[matttheboy]

Collective noun? Or have i just made that up? The team is singular but made up of many individuals so it can be both...maybe...

When it comes to my team (work it out from my avatar) i'd say 'we' which is something that doesn't happen in any other language that i know of.

[matttheboy]

Probably should have done this in the first place, got up off my ar se and just checked but i just couldn't be bothered...until 2 minutes later and it started to annoy me.

Just checked in parrott's 'grammar for english language teachers'.

"Collective nouns are words which represent groups of people, e.g. 'the team'...These nouns are singular in that we can talk about them 'an awful team' (wolves).

People sometimes choose either singular or plural verb forms according to whether they are thinking of a unified 'body' or of the various people who make it up.

'The army provides an excellent career'
'The army are investigating the incident' "

Guess i was pretty much right!

[guty]

I think there is also a British/US thing there.
I think the US has (have?) always referred to teams as singular,
Boston plays NY, Dallas wins superbowl
in the UK until recently (mid 90s) they were plural,
Liverpool win UEFA, United draw
but increasingly are turning singular, a quick check gives UK newspapers not far off a 50/50 split.
Sounds strange to me with an "s", but thats progress (stress on 1st, or 2nd syllable?)

[Captain Yossarian]

A classic US/British Team.

British English:

Spain are always failing in important games.

US English:

England is getting worse and worse under Eriksson.

[dmb]

Man U are hated by alot of people.
Man U is hated by alot of people.
Both seem ok to me.

[basiltherat]

Colchester United (as a team of playing individuals) s uck.

Colchester United (as an organisation/club) is cheap to buy.

Just a gut feeling
basil

Go U's !

[Guy Courchesne]

Good set of threads here on US vs British English. I'm realizing that my own Canadian English is far closer to the US version than British.

[Sadken]

Always say "United go through", although with Roy Carroll between the sticks, who knows?

Similar thing seems to happen with band names. We (Bulldog spirited Brits) would always say "Daft Punk are playing in my house" whereas, the new LCD Soundsystem single is called "Daft Punk is playing at my house. Like my man matttheboy says, "it's all about collective nouns, baby" although I may be paraphrasing somewhat.

[matttheboy]