The government are negotiating... is negotiating...
The police is still not sure... are not sure...?
Today we'll talk about collective nouns in English!
Some nouns in English refer to groups of people: committee, government, police, enemy, team, audience.
These are collective nouns.
Somw collective nouns can take a singular or plural verb
depending on whether they are considered as a single unit or as a collection of individuals.
Some examples of collective nouns: audience, committee, crowd, enemy, company, government, team.
Here we can also talk about animals: pride, herd, flock, pack.
In general plural form is used in informal speech.
Now let's take a look at several pairs of sentences
where one and the same word can be considered as a single unit or as a collection of individuals.
The audience was larger than usual and the concert was a success.
So the audience as a whole, a single unit, a mass of people.
The audience were all clapping wildly.
So imagine a lot of people, all of them are cheering:
that person and this person, and that man, and this woman, they are all cheering.
The audience were all cheering wildly. Here seen as individuals.
Now I'm going to give you several pairs of sentences where verbs will be missing.
Your job is to try to guess where we should put a singular verb and where a plural verb.
The government is hoping that online voting will attract more young people to vote.
So the government as a single unit, as a complex machine.
The government are all very nervous about the report which is going to be published tomorrow.
So all the people there in the office are nervous.
Someone is giggling, someone is running around, another person is shouting.
So they are all nervous, the government are all very nervous about the report.
His family are all doctors. All family members, grandmothers, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers, wives.
Everyone! All his family members. His family are all doctors.
His family is the oldest in the country.
We consider this family not as a collection of individuals
but as a single unit, we talk about the family origin.
Here I need to point out that in American English we always use singular.
Which team is winning?
But remember that police and people are always used with plural verbs.
In American English or British English, it doesn't matter.
Police are, people are.
The police are investigating fraud allegations against him. The police are.
People make me nervous.
In general, using a plural verb it's considered to be an informal style, so be careful.
In addition in American English we always use singular.
But if you prefer British English you need to understand the peculiarities, the essence, the difference.
So that's it about collective nouns and verbs which can be used with them, singular or plural.
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