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Re: CHAT: Colectives (Re: CHAT: use of "they")

From:Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
Date:Monday, September 28, 1998, 6:52
Carlos Thompson wrote:
> Well. One of my most frequent errors in English is the use of some plurals > I count as collectives in Spanish, like "people". When I learned the word > "people" I learned as translation of "gente" which is a colective in > Spanish, and not as plural for "person". If I'm not mistaken, "people" is > both a plural and a colective, and usually takes the plural form of a verb: > "people are..."
Altho people can't take singular agreement anymore, even if it refers to a definite group, it can take the plural suffix -s, if it means specifically "nationality" or "ethnicity" or some similar meaning, altho it has a somewhat formal sound to it ("all the peoples of the Earth"). -- If God had meant for us to use the metric system, there would've been 10 disciples - anonymous http://www.crosswinds.net/orlando/~nik/ ICQ #: 18656696 AOL screen-name: NikTailor