I have aroused a certain amount of ire on a forum for German speakers by announcing that it is virtually standard these days for Australian native speakers to use the plural form of the verb after the subject "one of the N-plural":
"One of the players were sent off the field"
I have suggested furthermore that it is almost certainly the same with speakers of BE, but maybe has not yet been adopted in North America.
If they can refrain from telling me all the reasons why it is wrong to use the plural after the singular subject, I would rather like to hear from native speakers living in an English-speaking environment as to the incidence of this form in their speech community.
I do not conform with this practice myself, which places me well and truly in the minority.
If I can get some sensible responses to this I will then present the wider "rule" I have formulated of which this is only one instance.
Harzer
one of ...
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Duncan Powrie
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I am British, and I believe I would say "was" (as would most if not all the people I know, in London). If you used "were", you could start sounding a bit quaint, rural and rustic (I don't want to say uneducated) - like the cliched West Country speaker, perhaps? Or, if that is objectionable, then like the first mate to Captain Jack Sparrow in "Pirates of the Caribbean"!
"One of the players were sent off, he were, ooh arr shiver me timbers etc."
"One of the players were sent off, he were, ooh arr shiver me timbers etc."
Written down, I prefer was as we are referring to one person. However, in speech I can see why were might end up being used.
For one thing, the presence of the word players might lead one to say were due to the proximity of the plural form. However, I think it's more likely that the -s in was might get assimilated into sent, so one might hear one of the players were sent off. In other words, if I hear the example Harzer gives in natural connected speech, I can't be sure which verb form the speaker has in mind.
How do people feel about one of the players were booked? To my ears it sounds awful and I certainly would mark it wrong in an essay. I'm not about to argue Sociolinguistics with an IELTS examiner.
For one thing, the presence of the word players might lead one to say were due to the proximity of the plural form. However, I think it's more likely that the -s in was might get assimilated into sent, so one might hear one of the players were sent off. In other words, if I hear the example Harzer gives in natural connected speech, I can't be sure which verb form the speaker has in mind.
How do people feel about one of the players were booked? To my ears it sounds awful and I certainly would mark it wrong in an essay. I'm not about to argue Sociolinguistics with an IELTS examiner.
If I were....
Good afternoon all!
I, myself, would not accept it at all. One of them was, the subject is "one" and the verb is "was" and that's that. lolwhites makes a good point concerning the reduction possibly causing doubt about which of the forms has been used, though "wasent" sounds more open to my mid-western American ear than "wersent", but that gets into regionalisms and has little to do with the question at hand.
Could this be that conditional thing of "If I was" vs "If I were"? I won't say which linguistic community uses which, I know I say "If I were" and I know that the books say that both are correct and that one is more English than the other American etc....
In any case, without the "if", if the subject is singular, the verb should be singular as well, at least in my book, and seems so in others' books as well! Naturally, in the simple past, the only verb that could cause this confusion would be the verb "be", the rest, fortunately, use the same form for all people and numbers.
peace,
revel.
I, myself, would not accept it at all. One of them was, the subject is "one" and the verb is "was" and that's that. lolwhites makes a good point concerning the reduction possibly causing doubt about which of the forms has been used, though "wasent" sounds more open to my mid-western American ear than "wersent", but that gets into regionalisms and has little to do with the question at hand.
Could this be that conditional thing of "If I was" vs "If I were"? I won't say which linguistic community uses which, I know I say "If I were" and I know that the books say that both are correct and that one is more English than the other American etc....
In any case, without the "if", if the subject is singular, the verb should be singular as well, at least in my book, and seems so in others' books as well! Naturally, in the simple past, the only verb that could cause this confusion would be the verb "be", the rest, fortunately, use the same form for all people and numbers.
peace,
revel.
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Andrew Patterson
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Harzer,
I usually find your input intelegent and interesting, but this is really a non-starter.
One of the players was...
Two or more of the players were...
I don't know where you get the information that the "were" form is popular with Australians when referring to one of a group, but no Australians, or any other native speakers that I know do. Even speakers of dialects that say, "he /she were," as can be found in parts of the British Midlands and parts of the North of England seem to revert to "was" when referring to one of a group.
Maybe you are mixing this up with the fact that a team can be referred to in the singular or plural.
I usually find your input intelegent and interesting, but this is really a non-starter.
One of the players was...
Two or more of the players were...
I don't know where you get the information that the "were" form is popular with Australians when referring to one of a group, but no Australians, or any other native speakers that I know do. Even speakers of dialects that say, "he /she were," as can be found in parts of the British Midlands and parts of the North of England seem to revert to "was" when referring to one of a group.
Maybe you are mixing this up with the fact that a team can be referred to in the singular or plural.
Thanks for the input so far.
Andrew: I "get my information", as you put it, by listening to ordinary people around me. There is an extremely high incidence of this usage here in Australia, which I have in fact been documenting for the last 12 years or so, in different parts of the country. And I am certainly not mixing it up with anything else. It is possibly an extension of what I think I am correct in saying is now standard usage (it is certainly my usage), namely, "a number of people were standing at the bus-stop", where we see the singular noun being overridden by the plural expansion when it comes to selecting the number of the verb.
Revel: The last thing I wanted was a lecture on what is wrong with this form, but you were determined to give me one anyway. The question was, if you live in an English-speaking environment do you hear it being used at all in spontaneous conversation?
This has nothing whatever to do with the assimilation of sounds at the phonetic level, but must be dealt with as a grammatical novelty. I ask the question because I am of course stuck in my own speech community; and I have no contact with English speakers in other parts of the world, because when I travel it is to non-English speaking countries where I can get to practise the foreign languages I have learnt.
Furthermore, what I am hearing out there is only one aspect of a more general tendency regarding the choice of verb-number, which I will not bother to mention at this point.
At the moment what I am hoping to come across is written evidence for this usage - but so far only a couple of rather tenuous examples have come my way. Yet I live in hope.
Harzer
Andrew: I "get my information", as you put it, by listening to ordinary people around me. There is an extremely high incidence of this usage here in Australia, which I have in fact been documenting for the last 12 years or so, in different parts of the country. And I am certainly not mixing it up with anything else. It is possibly an extension of what I think I am correct in saying is now standard usage (it is certainly my usage), namely, "a number of people were standing at the bus-stop", where we see the singular noun being overridden by the plural expansion when it comes to selecting the number of the verb.
Revel: The last thing I wanted was a lecture on what is wrong with this form, but you were determined to give me one anyway. The question was, if you live in an English-speaking environment do you hear it being used at all in spontaneous conversation?
This has nothing whatever to do with the assimilation of sounds at the phonetic level, but must be dealt with as a grammatical novelty. I ask the question because I am of course stuck in my own speech community; and I have no contact with English speakers in other parts of the world, because when I travel it is to non-English speaking countries where I can get to practise the foreign languages I have learnt.
Furthermore, what I am hearing out there is only one aspect of a more general tendency regarding the choice of verb-number, which I will not bother to mention at this point.
At the moment what I am hoping to come across is written evidence for this usage - but so far only a couple of rather tenuous examples have come my way. Yet I live in hope.
Harzer
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woodcutter
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Go west, young man, or go north...........
I think if the Brits put their regional thinking caps on, they will realize that Harzer's example is common enough in Britain, though far from standard. It's one more example of how what we might say and what we normally teach differ to a wide degree, and that there is little cause to get all blustery and "I'm a native speaker, I am, my sentence is correct" about every single thing we come out with.
Well,
Good morning all.
Firstly, if it sounded like a lecture, please forgive me, when I talk about such things it is usually in a "lecture-like" context. I also need to see the eye-doctor, I had read "Austrian" where Hazier wrote "Australian" and mistakenly thought that he/she was an extremely good foreign writer of English. And it's true, the original post asked that we not say what was wrong with it.
However, saying what I think is wrong with it defines the filter through which I hear this phenomena. It sounds wrong to my ear and only because the other is what I use and expect. Answering then, the question about the frequency of this usage, in the areas I lived in the USA (New York City, Illinois, California and Colorado), I would say its use is limited to people who for one reason or another don't pay attention to their English teachers (that is, English we study as native speakers, not ESL or EFL) when those teachers point out that "rule" I mentioned in my last post. It is either frequent or infrequent depending on the group you are speaking with. Its use is often interpreted as wrong and consequently places the user in a particular social bracket which often doesn't have any clearer definition than "not correct".
peace,
revel.
Firstly, if it sounded like a lecture, please forgive me, when I talk about such things it is usually in a "lecture-like" context. I also need to see the eye-doctor, I had read "Austrian" where Hazier wrote "Australian" and mistakenly thought that he/she was an extremely good foreign writer of English. And it's true, the original post asked that we not say what was wrong with it.
However, saying what I think is wrong with it defines the filter through which I hear this phenomena. It sounds wrong to my ear and only because the other is what I use and expect. Answering then, the question about the frequency of this usage, in the areas I lived in the USA (New York City, Illinois, California and Colorado), I would say its use is limited to people who for one reason or another don't pay attention to their English teachers (that is, English we study as native speakers, not ESL or EFL) when those teachers point out that "rule" I mentioned in my last post. It is either frequent or infrequent depending on the group you are speaking with. Its use is often interpreted as wrong and consequently places the user in a particular social bracket which often doesn't have any clearer definition than "not correct".
peace,
revel.
It seems to me that this debate boils down to what we want, or need, to teach our students. They need to be aware that native speakers don't all speak the same way, but that doesn't mean that anything goes.
If I have a group of students who are preparing for a public exam I have to say to them "You may hear this form but don't use it in a test". If they are interested in regional and social variations I'll tell them about that, but I still wouldn't encourage them to reproduce it for two main reasons:
Firstly, if students use "nonstandard" variations such as using rhyming slang words, they may be claiming membership of a speech community to which they may not actually belong. Secondly, I don't want them to be ridiculed or not taken seriously because they use "uneducated" speech patterns. While I fully support the view that no dialect is intrinsically "better" than another, out there in the real world there are many who do not agree with me and students need to be sensitive to that.
If a student comes up to me and asks "I heard a work colleague say One of the players were sent off the field. Is this correct or incorrect?" my answer would be "It's something you may hear from people from a certain area or with a certain level of education but you'd best avoid saying it yourself".
If I have a group of students who are preparing for a public exam I have to say to them "You may hear this form but don't use it in a test". If they are interested in regional and social variations I'll tell them about that, but I still wouldn't encourage them to reproduce it for two main reasons:
Firstly, if students use "nonstandard" variations such as using rhyming slang words, they may be claiming membership of a speech community to which they may not actually belong. Secondly, I don't want them to be ridiculed or not taken seriously because they use "uneducated" speech patterns. While I fully support the view that no dialect is intrinsically "better" than another, out there in the real world there are many who do not agree with me and students need to be sensitive to that.
If a student comes up to me and asks "I heard a work colleague say One of the players were sent off the field. Is this correct or incorrect?" my answer would be "It's something you may hear from people from a certain area or with a certain level of education but you'd best avoid saying it yourself".
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[email protected]
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one of
"were" is a plural, so if "one" player is sent off it would be "one was" as opposed to "they were."
This is the way i was taught, from louise, an English girl taught in an English school.
This is the way i was taught, from louise, an English girl taught in an English school.
Quick example
Hey everyone!
Have to be quick, the Catalan spinach is on the fire and don't want it to burn.
lolwhites points out: "Firstly, if students use "nonstandard" variations such as using rhyming slang words, they may be claiming membership of a speech community to which they may not actually belong. " and that introduces my example.
The diminutive suffix in "standard" Spanish is "-ito" or "-ita" depending on the gender of the noun we are reducing in size. So, "poor little thing" would be pobrecito if it is male and pobrecita if it is female.
In Zaragoza, that suffix is "-ico" or "-ica". It is one of the ways we immediately identify someone as being from that part of Aragon. Last year that suffix got stuck into my own Spanish usage. Now, I speak quite well, have an accent and am always trying to improve. But on more than one occasion, saying pobrecico, it was pointed out to me that 1) I am not Spanish and 2) I am certainly not maño (an endearing, sometimes despicative term in reference to folk from Zaragoza). I now let the -ico show up from time to time but have reverted to the -ito for normal use.
It reminds me of coining words or playing with word order. I usually don't let my students coin words and I am hard-headed on word order. They are not natives and in some way (and please don't misinterpret the following) they don't seem to have the "right" to do such things, even when their English is excellent. They will always belong to the ESL community and straying from the "standard" might get them into hot water that they might not understand.
So, though this usage that began this thread may be common in certain linguistic communities, I agree with lolwhites, it's one of those things that is explained when it comes up and within the context of the needs of the student.
peace,
revel.
Have to be quick, the Catalan spinach is on the fire and don't want it to burn.
lolwhites points out: "Firstly, if students use "nonstandard" variations such as using rhyming slang words, they may be claiming membership of a speech community to which they may not actually belong. " and that introduces my example.
The diminutive suffix in "standard" Spanish is "-ito" or "-ita" depending on the gender of the noun we are reducing in size. So, "poor little thing" would be pobrecito if it is male and pobrecita if it is female.
In Zaragoza, that suffix is "-ico" or "-ica". It is one of the ways we immediately identify someone as being from that part of Aragon. Last year that suffix got stuck into my own Spanish usage. Now, I speak quite well, have an accent and am always trying to improve. But on more than one occasion, saying pobrecico, it was pointed out to me that 1) I am not Spanish and 2) I am certainly not maño (an endearing, sometimes despicative term in reference to folk from Zaragoza). I now let the -ico show up from time to time but have reverted to the -ito for normal use.
It reminds me of coining words or playing with word order. I usually don't let my students coin words and I am hard-headed on word order. They are not natives and in some way (and please don't misinterpret the following) they don't seem to have the "right" to do such things, even when their English is excellent. They will always belong to the ESL community and straying from the "standard" might get them into hot water that they might not understand.
So, though this usage that began this thread may be common in certain linguistic communities, I agree with lolwhites, it's one of those things that is explained when it comes up and within the context of the needs of the student.
peace,
revel.
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Andrew Patterson
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Harzar if you has [sic] heard Australians say, "one of them were," I'll have to take your word for it. Is it just possible they were contracting both "was" and "were" to w'? eg One of them w'going.
Lolwhites wrote:
I'm originally form Cardiff, Wales, UK and we don't say "had best" very much by there.[sic]
Lolwhites wrote:
Speaking of which, in your opinion, and since you use it here, has "had best" become standard English. I don't mean to mock here, text books often teach "had better" but I've yet to see "had best" in a textbook. It is particulartly common in London English. What actually is its relation to "had better", is "had best" becoming the proximal form, and "had better" the remote form."It's something you may hear from people from a certain area or with a certain level of education but you'd best avoid saying it yourself".
I'm originally form Cardiff, Wales, UK and we don't say "had best" very much by there.[sic]
Gor blimey guv'nor! I didn't realise had best was a London thing but you've managed to identify my roots without hearing my accent 
Actually, I always thought there was a difference between had best and had better.
You'd better take the train = It's a good idea
You'd best take the train = It's the best option
Well, in my English, anyway. Don't know if it's standard.
Actually, I always thought there was a difference between had best and had better.
You'd better take the train = It's a good idea
You'd best take the train = It's the best option
Well, in my English, anyway. Don't know if it's standard.
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Stephen Jones
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I've never heard "One of the players were sent off" as opposed to "None of the players were sent off" which is both common and correct.
"had best" is accepted by the New SOED - hardly avant-garde as far as usage goes.
"had best" is accepted by the New SOED - hardly avant-garde as far as usage goes.
one had best do, <unknown>one were best do, <unknown>one were best to do orig. impers. w. obl. case (= for one), later pers. (w. nom.) one would find it most advisable or advantageous to do
"Harzer if you has [sic] heard Australians say, "one of them were," I'll have to take your word for it"
Should that be "sick"? There's no need to parody me; I asked a simple enough question and expected a "no" or " sometimes" or " fairly often" or whatever, together with some indication of time and place and so on, if you were particularly inclined to help, and not a grammatical explanation or an essay on ESL teaching methodology. Makes one wonder about the standard of ESL in Poland.
Yes, I'm afraid you do have to take my word for it until such time as I can come up with some written examples that you can verify for yourself.
Harzer[/b]
Should that be "sick"? There's no need to parody me; I asked a simple enough question and expected a "no" or " sometimes" or " fairly often" or whatever, together with some indication of time and place and so on, if you were particularly inclined to help, and not a grammatical explanation or an essay on ESL teaching methodology. Makes one wonder about the standard of ESL in Poland.
Yes, I'm afraid you do have to take my word for it until such time as I can come up with some written examples that you can verify for yourself.
Harzer[/b]