Just found out that, before the Civil War, it was more common to refer to the U.S. as a plural, "The United States are..." but gradually, after the Civil War, we switched to referring to the U.S. in the singular, which is kinda grammatically incorrect, but better reflects the political reality.
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British English, if you can call it that, refers to individual companies with the plural "are" instead of "is."
Dang, if only someone would tell them the truth.
Hank, where are you living?
Political reality is that ~30% didn’t vote and ~35% voted for a convicted felon, rapist, russian asset who most likely falsified and stole 2024 elections with help of musk & putler.
US never been more divided!
Barring the unintentionally prescriptivist premise of what I'm saying, it's nice to know that it isn't exactly a new phenomenon.
Proper Noun versus noun.
I’m not sure we are still united by the same values anymore.
You're from the United States OF America, as in the union residing in the continent of America.
But no "Amwrica in name therefore America"
@hankgreen.bsky.social
I agree that the change in grammar happened, but I'm less convinced that it was related to post-Civil War political reality.
In many ways, the individual States were less unified after the war than ever before.
The United States are not united.
The United States is not united.
When talking about the makeup of those entities then it becomes plural. The herd of animals is vs the animals in the herd are.
https://kcls.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S82C637355/quotations
"Before the Civil War, the states were all separate. People used to say "United States are." Wasn't until the war ended, people started saying "The United States is." Under Lincoln, we became one nation."
Alas, it now seems to be dividing into two political / ideological entities, so it may have to go back to being a plural.
Singular: "The United States is a troubled nation."
Plural: "The United States are readying resources to deal with Trump destroying aid services."
However, if you were talking about the actual ninja turtles, you would likely say a plural verb... "The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are coming to save the city."
So both ways can be grammatical
To your point, context dictates how we'd use the verb with the US. Are we talking about the country or are we talking about the United *States*?
Like if the pre-Revolver Beatles were John, Paul, George, and Ringo, and post were the singular band.
"The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are my favourite fictional superheroes."
"The Avengers are some of the best comic book heroes."
"The Justice League is a wide-ranging group of superheroes."
It depends a lot on the whether the collective noun is plural or not.
Like, if it's a monolith people see it as a titanic entity that can crush them like a bug. Whereas if we kept referring to it as a collection of states they'd feel more autonomy and wouldn't elect despots out of fear.
Hanks team ftw 😤
That is the reason ‘is’ is the correct verb.
We don’t say ‘the Netherlands are’ but ‘the Netherlands is’ and that’s obviously plural.
‘The states are’ but ‘the United States is.’
Plural vs. Singular
They also say ‘I was stood in line for 40 minutes’ instead of ‘was standing.’
Using the passive is a bit odd.
Jets is plural, team is not.
The board are meeting. = They are meeting.
The board is meeting. = It is meeting.
So, is board a they or an it?
The British Isles are plural. Needs are, not is. Same with Hawaiian islands.
If unity is the focus, then a singular verb hits that home: The team is decided.
Thanks for reminding me!
The more telling move is from "These United States" to "The United States" IMHO
There's nothing in the Constitution about leaving the union, so people say states "cannot" secede, but it's always seemed a bit hazy to me (legally).
A state does not have the right to secede from the Union (the US is), and you cannot legally own people as property.
I don't think they care about the grammar mistake.
MAGA is where the stupid gather.
I wonder both the reason and what it may indicate.
(that is actually how it was called when I first learned about the civil war)
One example is "math" vs. "maths". To Americans, "mathematics" is a singular thing, thus "math", vs in Britain it's viewed as a plural, thus "maths".
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Rolling+Stones+is%2CRolling+Stones+are&year_start=1985&year_end=2008&corpus=en-US&smoothing=3
Rolling Stones are
Erasure is
Mumford & Sons are
Daft Punk is
source: i'm a linguist and i spent 20 years in bands
Conversely, using “couch are” or another singular band name with a 3pl verb would sound equally ungrammatical
think about “tom petty and the heartbreakers” or other “lead and the band” type names
also “the rolling stones is” just sounds ungrammatical to me
I feel like it’s semi innocuous, but also probably weakens the understanding that these entities are groups of *people*.
Maybe there's something more specific going on in American English with countries. I still don't think I say "the Netherlands are" or "the United Arab Emirates are".
American English is weird.
Case in point: articles talking about the Utah Jazz.