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The first thing I can see in this picture are 2 people
I happened to see this sentence, and it says using 'is' instead of 'are' is wrong.
As I looked up some grammar stuff, you can invert the complement if it is not a noun but an adjective or an adverb.
Also the subject “the first thing” does not seem to be a sort of unit such as 2 inches as in
“2 inches is not that long.”
So I would like to ask why and how the verb should be 'are', not 'is'. Thank you.
You seem to be overthinking this. What is the subject of the following sentence? What is the verb?
(Hint: I made them bold.) With a singular subject you need a singular verb. Thus, is should be used instead of are.
I would opine that many native speakers would say
In this picture I can see two people.
There is no need to start with a list, The first thing... especially if the photo is detailed, but the OP wants to know if using the plural verb in this instance is grammatical or not
The first thing [that] I can see {in this picture} are 2 people
If we take away the th-words (that, this, there) we are left with
WRONG: The first thing I can see are two people
Although it doesn't sound wrong because the verb agrees with the predicate plural noun, two people; it disagrees with the subject of the sentence which is "The first thing". In fact, it follows the standard Subject Verb Object (SVO) order
CORRECT: The first thing I can see is two people
The plural "two people" after the singular verb makes it sound a bit strange even though "two people" is not the subject of the verb. But verbs MUST agree with their subject.
(Since the relative clause has a subject (I) already, the relative word, that, is unnecessary and may be omitted.)
