VOA · Everyday Grammar
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Everyday Grammar digs into one grammar topic per episode — verb tenses, prepositions, sentence patterns — with plenty of spoken examples. Because you are listening to language about language, it doubles as grammar review while you train your ears.
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01In this week's Everyday Grammar, we answer a question from a reader named Saul.
02Saul asked, when you make a question about a team such as the Bay Packers, do you say, are the Bay Packers famous, or is the Bay Packers famous?
03Saul is talking about the Green Bay Packers.
04The professional American football team is based in the city of Green Bay, Wisconsin.
05The team's name, the Packers, comes from a local meat packing plant where one of the team founders were.
06Finding the answer to Saul's question will help us learn about different kinds of nouns in American English.
07Let's start with the simple answer to Saul's question.
08We usually use the plural form of the B verb to talk about a team name that includes a plural noun.
09David Zarin wrote this about the Packers in the New Yorker magazine.
10The Packers are owned by the fans.
11In this sentence, the third-person plural verb form, are, agrees with the plural noun, Packers.
12When we simply use the word team, we are using a collective noun.
13A collective noun refers to a number of people, but we usually treat it like a singular noun.
14Other collective nouns include audience, government, committee, and staff.
15That is why you would expect most Americans to say, his team is playing well this season.
16But English speakers in other countries often treat collective nouns as plural nouns.
17People in Britain and Ireland, for example, might instead say, his team are playing well this season.
18Sometimes Americans talk or write about a sports team without using the team's actual name.
19Instead, they refer to the team by the city they represent.
20Here is an example of what we mean from Wikipedia.
21Green Bay is the third-oldest team in the National Football League.
22The B verb is singular, is, because the city name Green Bay is a singular noun.
23We can write the structure like this.
24Plural noun plus third-person plural verb form.
25Singular or collective noun plus third-person singular verb form.
26Many American sports teams have plural names, like the Kansas City Chiefs, the Detroit Lions, and the New England Patriots.
27These names are all count nouns.
28But some teams have names that are non-count or mass nouns.
29They include the National Basketball Association's Miami Heat, Orlando Magic, and the Oklahoma City Thunder.
30This is where things get a little tricky.
31Let's use the Orlando Magic as an example.
32The word magic is a non-count noun.
33Magic is a power that lets someone do impossible things by saying special words or performing special actions.
34When we talk about magic, we use singular verb forms.
35But in the case of the Orlando Magic basketball team, some sports writers treat the non-count noun team name as a plural.
36For example, the Orlando Magic official website says, The Orlando Magic are one of the only two teams to beat the Chicago Bulls in a playoff series in the 1990s.
37Note the use of the third-person plural verb form of B.
38Now, let's travel outside of the United States to see how other sports teams are discussed.
39Teams in the Union of European Football Associations, or UEFA, are often named after the city that sponsors them.
40But Real Madrid is a little different.
41The team got the approval of King Alfonso XIII of Spain in 1920, and can use the Spanish word for royal.
42Sports writer Manuel Esposito wrote on Soccer Feed, Real Madrid is known for attracting the world's best players.
43The Athletic Club of Bilbao is another UEFA team.
44In a recent story for ESPN, British reporter Sid Lowe followed the British English preference of making collective nouns plural.
45Athletic are a unique club famously following a policy of playing only with Basque players.
46Coming back to the United States, a lot of people in the sports world this week are talking about star basketball player Caitlin Clark.
47During her college career at the University of Iowa, she broke the all-time scoring record for men and women.
48Now, she is going professional.
49Look at how sports writers talked about her new professional basketball team.
50On Monday, the Women's National Basketball Association held their yearly event in which teams can pick players for the upcoming season.
51The WNBA team from the state of Indiana, Indiana Fever, got the chance to pick first.
52Not surprisingly, the team chose Clark.
53The team's website announced the news like this.
54Indiana Fever select Caitlin Clark with number one overall pick in 2024 WNBA draft.
55Yet the WNBA announced it this way.
56Indiana Fever selects Caitlin Clark with first overall pick in WNBA draft 2024.
57Here is a quiz question for you.
58If the team name, Indiana Fever, is a collective noun, which sentence is correct, according to American English?
59When you answer, tell us about your favorite sports team.
60Write a sentence or two using the team's name and let us know if the name is a count noun or a collective noun.
61And that's Everyday Grammar.
62I'm Jill Robbins.
63I'm Jill Robbins.
64I'm Jill Robbins.
65I'm Jill Robbins.
66I'm Jill Robbins.
67I'm Jill Robbins.
68I'm Jill Robbins.
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