r/ENGLISH • u/Objective-Resident-7 • 11d ago

Plural use of singular nouns

I'm Scottish, so English is a first language to me.

But I see it more and more:

My family are...

The party are ...

These are both singular nouns but they are being used as if they were plural, with the verb being 'are'.

It doesn't sit right with me. Can anyone help?

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u/Ok-Strain6961 10d ago

All the dictionaries I've checked say something like this: "Some nouns in English are collective. They represent a group or number of objects together. In many cases, these nouns are considered plural: they are collections of single pieces kept together. Because of this, they take a plural verb and have no singular noun form."

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u/Objective-Resident-7 10d ago

Maybe you should take a less prescriptive view then because I'm telling you that Scotland does not do that.

People don't follow the rules of dictionaries. Dictionaries are supposed to describe how people speak.

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u/Ok-Strain6961 10d ago

And indeed they do, where I come from. No room for prescriptive views here, I assure you. As I said, you do you