Need help on plural verbs for Int'l sports

H

Hu_Fan

Guest
I've tried to get used to the 'sound in my head' of plural verbs attached to singular nouns when it comes to international sports. But it's not easy. I'm used to singular verbs with singular nouns in all other uses of langage globally, so am perplexed why the criss-cross in international soccer and some other sports such as hockey at times.

It's used widely in every bit of dialog in soccer, in particular Euro and World Cup.

It's used in hockey best I can tell.

I don't ever recall it being used in the Olympics; summer or winter.

Would appreciate if someone would explain and elaborate.

If you say "Spain reign" or "Spain are the winner" then how am I supposed to 'hear that in my head' in terms of what is the thing that "ARE" taking action.

Is it all of Spain as in all of a team, or all of a nation? ARE the winner..... Like all of the country of Spain ARE the winner. Or, all the players of the Spain(ish) team reign? Like that?

For some reason we do not say the United States HAVE 17 gold medals thus far in the Olympics. We say the Unites States HAS 17 gold medals.
Germany HAS 15 medals.
Russia HAS...
Italy HAS...
Spain HAS....

But if the Olympics follows the wold cup and soccer and hockey conventions, then Bob Costas and others would be using plural verbs.
USA have 17 gold medals
Germany have 12 gold medals
Russia have 10 gold medals
Italy have 7 gold medals
Spain have 5 gold medals
Japan have 12 gold medals
China have 15 gold medals


High school, college and professional teams in America use singular nouns for the schools, cities and teams, and match them to singular verbs. The mascots are PLURAL, but the names of the teams are SINGULAR.

Dallas is the winner. But, the Cowboys are the winner.
City/high school/team IS....
Mascot ARE

You don't say "The Longhorns" IS... you say Longhorns ARE...
You don't say Dallas ARE winning with 5 minutes to play. You say Dallas IS winning....
But today, in Kiev, Spain ARE the winners. Spain HAVE won the Euro Cup.

In August I doubt if announcers will say "Germany ARE leading" if the German 400 meter swim team is leading with one lap to go in a swim competition.

Basically, then, why do international sports demand the ear hear a plural verb to a singular noun, when all other references to the names of countries in any other reference -- social, cultural, political, United Nations -- is always singular verb with singular noun and never plural verb with singular noun?

You don't say...
Spain ARE a nice place to visit.
Italy ARE having trouble with their debt.
England ARE voting no in the security council.

wtf.gif
I'm open to a plausible explanation but feel it's just a habit that built up over time and now it "sounds" right to those who've followed those sports all their lives.
 
While your English teacher would be proud of you Hu, the Queen's English teacher rules with the English taught in the rest of the English speaking world.
 
You see and hear this more and more, and it grates on my nerves probably as much as it does on yours. The authors/speakers of those 'blackboard scraping' phrases are simply ignoring the singular characteristics of collective nouns.

Group is
Groups are
United States can be is (if you're talking about the team); can be are if you're talking about a joint action - the United States of America are at one in their thinking
Spain is
The Spanish or Spaniards are

And on and on.

My HS grammar teacher is Thomas Harris' ("Silence of the Lambs") aunt. Trust me - you believed her when she said it.

On a similar track - it's the use of "an" before words (usually acronyms) that are consonants, but have a vowel sound. For example - an SEC investigation, when the "s" has an "es" sound.

Glad I'm not the only one offended by the dumbing-down of our language. It's only flourished with texting, tweeting, and facebooking - coupled with an attitude that says it's acceptable as long as the message gets through.

And I say FU to that attitude.
 
The announcers on Formula 1 broadcasts do this also. They always use the name of the teams as a plural, as in...Ferrari are the winner, McLaren are running in third place....
Bugs me. Caint these people speak gud English?
 
On similar note, British speakers often irritatingly omit articles... It comes up in the Tour de France all the time when a bike rider goes "to hospital" instead of the hospital. I'll never get used to that, even though I had a professor at UT that always omitted articles in his spoken lectures. I never figured out where he picked that style of speaking up, but he didn't have an noticeable accent and you'd never hear the words "a", "an", or "the" in his lectures. It was very odd to listen to.
 
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