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A friend of mine is an Assistant Language Teacher at a junior high school in Japan. The textbook for the grade eight class has the question "Is Eri's host family kind to her?"

If I were to answer that question, I would use a plural and say "Yes, they are." But the main teacher of the class says that the proper answer is "Yes, it is," because the question is asked in the singular form. This seems really unnatural to me.

Which of these is correct, and why? The main teacher will not be satisfied with anything other than an answer that's backed up with proper rules of grammar.

blainarmstrong
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    Well *I’d* say, “Yes they are.” and I know very few, if any, who would use *it* – Jim Oct 23 '15 at 02:40
  • Groups are often referred to in the plural when the focus is on the aggregate behavior of the individual members. – Jim Oct 23 '15 at 02:42
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    Big lesson: Teachers are not infallible. On ELL I heard of a guy whose teacher kept insisting on putting "the" before year dates... (which natives usually don't do) By the way, "are" is the right word here, since the subject is really "the people in Eri's host family" and not "Eri's host family" alone. – Nihilist_Frost Oct 23 '15 at 03:20
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    @Nihilist_Frost I hear you! The teacher in question is one of the worst English teachers I've ever met. She's even told my friend to pronounce "won't" as "want" because--and I'm not making this up--"That's the way Japanese people pronounce it, and it would be confusing to the students to pronounce it differently." SMH – blainarmstrong Oct 23 '15 at 03:27
  • That's the teachers being too lazy to teach students how to pronounce the W sound. Japanese has a bit of an inaptitude in teaching English. (Japanese can only stick a W sound before its A sound, which to an English speaker is around the short A and "ah"). Basically 75+% of the sounds, etc. of English that natives use often are simply alien to Japanese, which has purely 5 vowels, while English has up to 20 vowels! And English has 40+ consonants while Japanese has around 24+. In addition, Japanese conceives of words as consonant+vowel syllables while English has clusters all over. So on. – Nihilist_Frost Oct 23 '15 at 03:59
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    The Japanese can think of lone vowels along with the consonant+vowel syllables. They'll stick u's and o's on loans that don't conform unless they are taught how to handle them. To get back on topic, I believe that plural use in English usually applies in a reply to something. A plain statement like "The family is filled with uneducated people." would use "is". – Nihilist_Frost Oct 23 '15 at 04:02
  • And don't even get me started on JTEs using katakana to teach pronunciation! – blainarmstrong Oct 23 '15 at 06:02
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    There is a certain UK/US distinction as well, but perhaps not in this case. The committee are generous, or The committee is generous. – GEdgar Dec 22 '15 at 14:08
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    The real problem here is the reduction of a family to an it in the teacher's response. This is what makes the teacher's assertion wrong. In normal English speech, people (single or group) are almost never referred to as an it. – Tim Ward Jan 21 '16 at 13:17

2 Answers2

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If you used the word "family", you would use singular. Yes, the host family is kind to her. But when you ask about kindness, that is something about the individual members of the family, so the answer would more likely be "Yes, they are kind to her". Mom is kind, dad is kind, son is kind, daughter is kind, they are kind.

Note that just because someone asks about "the family", I am under no obligation to use the same word in my answer. I am free to answer "They are kind", or "The Smiths are kind".

gnasher729
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Group or collective nouns can be followed by the singular or plural verb. "But there is little difference in meaning. The choice depends on whether we see the family as a whole or as a number of individuals." With a singular verb we use "it,its,which,that". With a plural verb we use "they, their, who,that". When we mean the whole group,we might refer to its size or how it compares with others.e.g. The class consists of twelve girls and fifteen boys." The plural is more likely when we talk about people's feelings and thoughts."The information is from Oxford Guide to English Grammar by J.Eastwood. I think "Yes,they are. "is correct.

V.V.
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  • What is from Oxford Guide to English Grammar? If part of that is a quotation, you should separate it from the part that is your own words. – herisson Oct 23 '15 at 03:46
  • I tried to edit my answer. Hope it's acceptable. – V.V. Oct 23 '15 at 04:19
  • Thanks! So this is all your own words, but it's a summary of what's said in that source? – herisson Oct 23 '15 at 04:20
  • It's a summary partially quoted, I wonder if I can say so except for the last sentence . I don't know how it should be presented. The original article is longer.Should I put quotation marks? – V.V. Oct 23 '15 at 06:07
  • You put quotation marks around anything that is the exact words. If you've reworded the whole thing, you don't use quotation marks. Are there any links to the original article online, or did you use a paper copy? – herisson Oct 23 '15 at 06:10
  • I used a paper copy. – V.V. Oct 23 '15 at 06:17
  • You should prefix quoted paragraphs with > in order that it's formatted clearly as a quotation. You don't need inverted commas if you use a Markdown blockquote. It helps clearly distinguish your answer from a corroborating quote from a reference (which also needs to be cited and preferably linked -- you've done what you can here). – Andrew Leach Oct 23 '15 at 06:58