An Agreement

I was reading a news article recently and came across these words: "The Russians isn't ready to make a peace deal." I had to read it again because my mind wanted me to get rid of the "s" after Russians, but I immediately knew that was not what it was supposed to say either.

Using verbs that align with their subjects (called subject-verb agreement) is not easy for everyone. I used to live in a very small town where I would frequently hear people say, "we was" or "they was." Even highly educated people in that area used these subject-verb combinations because it was so common there. It almost seemed like not doing so would have meant that they didn't fit in as a member of their own community.

• I am hungry. She is hungry. We are hungry. They are hungry.
• I was hungry. She was hungry. We were hungry. They were hungry.
• I have food. She has food. We have food. They have food.
• I had food. She had food. We had food. They had food.

I have been learning English since before I was born, so the combinations above sound natural to me. I have never really analyzed which verbs we use or why, so I do think the patterns in these combinations are interesting.

It would be nice if there was some sort of rule that made it so all of the verbs did the same thing, but as I noticed in the mistake in the news article, one thing that is good about correct subject-verb agreement is that is makes it easier to know if we are talking about one person or more than one. It's kind of like having two witnesses instead of only one.

There are two more things that I think make the concept of subject-verb agreement even more confusing. One is when there are subjects that have singular and plural forms to describe the same thing. For example, someone could say, "Here are your cookies," or, "Here is your dessert" (the cookies).

The other thing that can be confusing is when we involve contractions. This is the one that gets me once in a while. It is almost like the contraction disguises the sound of the wrongness. For example, I could see myself saying, "Here's your cookies," but I probably wouldn't say, "Here is your cookies." Those contractions can be sneaky.

I wonder if they have any cookies.