New Scaratings

Hopefully someone out there knows the answer to this one. I'm watching the coverage of the EuroCup (yes, some of us don't find soccer boring and slow). The announcers will use plural when talking about a country's team, such as "France are ahead 1-0" or "Germany are going to substitute a player". A country is singular, but the group of players on the team is plural. Why are they using plural when the sentence has just the name of the country? Shouldn't it be "France is ahead 1-0", or "Germany is going to substitute a player"?

The short answer is that this is yet another difference between American and British English. I can elaborate in a follow-up post later.

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"...It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED...."

I am not sure that is even proper British English.

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"Truth Like Football. Gets kicked around much, before reaching goal." - Charlie Chan

" Don't look back, The bastards might be gaining on you." - Satchel Paige

Frank

Please elaborate, ZOG. I hope to learn something from you, but I don't think it is a difference between American and British English. Singular nouns and plural verbs don't go very well together. I've spent some time in the UK, and don't remember running into this. However, I'm always open to learn something new.

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"The game is afoot."

(I was off the Internet for a couple of days. I could still have responded on my tablet, but that is a pain for anything but a simple, short message.)

Actually, I have read about this particular difference between British and American English before, but this link explains it too, in the section called "Formal and notional agreement" under Nouns.

-- RWM

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"...It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED...."

Okay, I'll buy it, I read the whole God damn thing, but you could have saved me a lot of time by just quoting this from it:

"Nouns

[edit] Formal and notional agreement

In BrE, collective nouns can take either singular (formal agreement) or plural (notional agreement) verb forms, according to whether the emphasis is on the body as a whole or on the individual members respectively; compare a committee was appointed with the committee were unable to agree.[12][13] The term the Government always takes a plural verb in British civil service convention, perhaps to emphasize the principle of cabinet collective responsibility.[14] Compare also the following lines of Elvis Costello's song "Oliver's Army": Oliver's Army are on their way / Oliver's Army is here to stay. Some of these nouns, for example staff,[15] actually combine with plural verbs most of the time.

In AmE, collective nouns are almost always singular in construction: the committee was unable to agree. However, when a speaker wishes to emphasize that the individuals are acting separately, a plural pronoun may be employed with a singular or plural verb: the team takes their seats or the team take their seats, rather than the team takes its seats. However, such a sentence would most likely be recast as the team members take their seats.[16] Despite exceptions such as usage in The New York Times, the names of sports teams are usually treated as plurals even if the form of the name is singular.[17]

The difference occurs for all nouns of multitude, both general terms such as team and company and proper nouns (for example where a place name is used to refer to a sports team). For instance,

BrE: The Clash are a well-known band; AmE: The Clash is a well-known band.
BrE: Spain are the champions; AmE: Spain is the champion.

Proper nouns that are plural in form take a plural verb in both AmE and BrE; for example, The Beatles are a well-known band; The Saints are the champions, with one major exception: largely for historical reasons, in American English, the United States is is almost universal. This is due to an increase in national unity and pride after the American Civil War; before this, the construction "the United States are" was more common.[citation needed]

Australian and Canadian usage is consistent with the AmE pattern."

I completely disagree with the Brits on this. I know they started the language, but perhaps they should listen to grammarians in the United States, who might have a better idea.

p.s. Shouldn't all of this have been posted on "The Enlish Language" thread...? A place where our English language are normally discussed...?

(Obviously the English language is made up of many words, so I guess a plural verb is the way to go.)

p.p.s. Wouldn't it make you want to scream, if you heard somebody say, "Our football team are good."

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"The game is afoot."

To each their own. I'd rather provide the link and anyone interested can just follow it. It can't take that much time to click on a hyperlink.

-- RWM

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"...It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED...."

Clicking on the hyperlink only took a second, but there was a lot of stuff there to read through.

Anyway, thank you for teaching me something that I did not know before.

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"The game is afoot."