On 10/20/2010 11:46 PM, shiva das wrote:
In ,
Kennedy wrote:

In , Bruce
writes
wrote:
On Oct 20, 4:05 am, wrote:

Are the Daily Mail paying you or something?

(A) The Daily Mail is only one newspaper. Therefore it's "Is", rather
than "Are".


In British English, the plural is correct as the Daily Mail is treated
as a company of many people. In American English, the singular is
used because the Daily Mail is treated as one corporate entity.

It is urban myth that this is British v's American English. It is just
good and bad English.

Bollox, to borrow a word from across the pond. Far from an Urban Myth it
is elementary linguistics: all languages change all the time, and logic
and language are not necessarily friends. A double-negative in Russian
and other Slavic languages is a more emphatic negative, not a positive
as it is in English.

Think of the fact that English speakers have been in North America for
over 400 years, and that there was no rapid communications possible
between North America and the British Isles for most of that period.

Further, think about how many differences there are just within the
British Isles -- besides regional accents there are true dialects and
creoles in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, and I'm not talking about the
various Celtic languages, just English.

Think of France and Haiti. Kriyol and French are mutually
unintelligible. American English, British English, Australian and New
Zealand English are technically variants of Modern English but it
doesn't take long for usage to make it hard for one group to understand
another.

The only static languages are dead languages: Ancient Greek; Latin;
Sanskrit; Aramaic; Classical Arabic.

All living languages change all the time.
Thank you. shiva das. This is a very well stated description of the
development of languages. For a more entertaining, but less informative,
description, see Shaw's "Pygmalion" or it's musical adaptation "My Fair
Lady". Shaw was much, much more discerning about language variations
than the "my way or the highway" crowd.
Allen