On Nov. 17, the England soccer team defeated Kosovo 4-0 in the qualifiers for the Euro 2020 tournament. In a BBC report that day, England manager Gareth Southgate was quoted as saying, “I think the team have belief, for sure, you can see the confidence.”
Here, the England team is referred to in the plural, as Southgate says that “the team have belief.” Even though the noun “team” itself is, technically, singular, it belongs to a group of nouns known as collective nouns. This includes words like family, the government, (political) party, crew and choir. In British English, collective nouns are often treated grammatically as if they were plural, the logic being that they refer to groups consisting of several individuals. In American English, collective nouns are often treated as singular. This is the reason behind the confusion over whether it is better to say “my family is weird” or “my family are weird.” The answer is that both are correct: the first is American English and the second is British English but, whichever way you say it, questions about your family remain.
This is just a tendency; it is not set in stone, and depends a lot on context.
(Paul Cooper, Taipei Times)
英格蘭足球隊十一月十七日在二○二○年歐洲國家杯資格賽中，以四比○擊敗科索沃。英國廣播公司（BBC）當天一則新聞引述英格蘭隊總教練蓋瑞斯‧紹斯蓋特的話說：「I think the team have belief, for sure, you can see the confidence」（我認為本隊有信心，當然，你可以看得到自信）。
此句中的「the England team」（英格蘭隊）是以複數形式來指稱的──紹斯蓋特說「the team have belief」（本隊有信心）﹝而非單數的「the team has belief」﹞。雖然名詞「team」嚴格來講是單數，但它屬集合名詞。其他的集合名詞還有「family」（家庭）、「government」（政府）、「(political) party」（政黨）、「crew」（一組工作人員）和「choir」（合唱團）等。文法上，英式英文通常把集合名詞視為複數，它所根據的邏輯是：集合名詞所指稱的是由多人組成的群體。在美式英文中，集合名詞則通常被視為單數。這也就是為什麼對該說「my family is weird」（我的家人很奇怪）還是「my family are weird」莫衷一是的原因。答案是，這兩種說法都是正確的：第一種﹝單數的﹞是美式英文，第二種﹝複數的﹞則是英式英文；無論怎麼說，這家庭都是有問題的。
Photo: Reuters
照片：路透
集合名詞在英、美式英文中用法之不同，只是一種大致的傾向，並非斬釘截鐵的區分，且很大程度上是取決於上下文。
（台北時報林俐凱譯）
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