Timeline for Why "was" not "were" in "Nearly £20 was taken from my bank account"
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
12 events
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| Apr 14, 2017 at 1:19 | history | edited | user230 |
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| Sep 30, 2014 at 4:38 | comment | added | Armstrongest |
“Two and two is four” is common because the verb "to be" doubles as the copula in English. Other languages, like Japanese, for example would say 「2と2は4です」with desu being the copula at the end. A good way to think about the copula is it being the equal sign.
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| Sep 29, 2014 at 20:10 | comment | added | Michael E2 | Google Ngrams suggests "dollars were" v. "dollars was" is difficult for native speakers, too. However, many of the "dollars was" instances are from sentences like "A premium of ten dollars was awarded...," in which the verb agrees with another word than "dollars." I think the rule-makers are inventing reasons for what has become colloquial. Numbers, more and more, have become singular in construction. "Four people are a good number for dinner"; but "Four is a good number for dinner." We can blame the math teachers: Even "Two and two is four" is quite common. | |
| Sep 29, 2014 at 15:09 | answer | added | Jon | timeline score: -1 | |
| Sep 29, 2014 at 10:26 | comment | added | TMH |
The was I'd think of the difference is 100 $1 bills were taken from me vs 1 $100 bill was taken from me
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| Sep 29, 2014 at 4:38 | comment | added | Loren Pechtel | Yes, FumbleFingers got it--what's being taken is money, a non-count item. | |
| Sep 28, 2014 at 19:29 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackEnglishLL/status/516308733383962624 | ||
| Sep 28, 2014 at 19:12 | answer | added | supercat | timeline score: 5 | |
| Sep 28, 2014 at 15:34 | vote | accept | learner | ||
| Sep 28, 2014 at 15:15 | answer | added | Mohamed Hamza | timeline score: 28 | |
| Sep 28, 2014 at 14:58 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | It's because $100 and $20 are both being thought of as a [single] sum of money, not a collection consisting of several individual dollars. | |
| Sep 28, 2014 at 14:20 | history | asked | learner | CC BY-SA 3.0 |