Knowing what verbal number a collective noun can command

Harambee Stars coach Adel Amrouche gestures to players during a training session on November 26, 2013 at Moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani. Coach Amrouche has told Harambee Stars, who play Tanzania in Machakos on the afternoon of December 10, 2013, to give Kenya a 50th birthday present by qualifying to the finals of the East and Central Africa Senior Challenge Cup. PHOTO | CHRIS OMOLLO  

In Summary

• AFP is one of the four Western news companies which rake in viscid money by selling to the world juicily written headline-making cock-and-bull stories on the Third World’s adversities, most of which can be traced to the Western world’s own 500-year buccaneering and brutalisation.

By Philip Ochieng
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Though the word “team” is itself singular, English-language newspapers all over the world habitually use plural verbs for team actions in sports.

For instance, “Kenya were bundled out of the World Cup”. The question is: If “Kenya” is a singular idea, why the plural verb “were”? Because the “Kenya” in question — the team — is a plurality of human beings.

Yet I never fidget too much whenever — as happens frequently — a reporter or sub-editor uses the singular verb “was” for Kenya’s Harambee Stars.

For, after all, members of a team work very much like the various parts of a single machine, namely, in synchrony. English adopted this word from the Greek adverb sun (“together”) and noun khronos (“time”).

Things or human beings work synchronously — that is to say, as a team — if the activities of the various parts occur at the same time as, and in harmony with, one another.

That is why a farmer may speak of his yoked or otherwise harnessed oxen or horses as a “team”.

A church choir is a good synchrony — literally speaking, a good “timing together” of various tones.

But our concern here today is only about the grammatical number that a verb should take when activated by a collective noun (or pronoun), such as a team.

At the bottom of page 51 on February 24, this newspaper quoted the irrepressible Jose Mourinho as saying: “They are a very experienced team who has Champions League winners…”

This “they” referred to a Turkish team which had just given Mourinho’s Chelsea of London a run for their money.

I use the plural possessive adjective “their” precisely because the Turkish team “are” composed of a plurality of lads.

DIFFICULT LANGUAGE

They include a darling of many Kenyans, a never-say-die goalmouth wizard called Didier Drogba of Cote d’Ivoire.

But one question is inevitable from Mourinho’s statement: If the team “are experienced” (“are” being a plural verb), how is it that, in the very same breath, the very same team “has champions” (where “has” is a singular verb)? We can be lenient with the Portuguese soccer guru because English is not his mother tongue.

Indeed, he is to be admired for having mastered that awfully difficult language in a relatively short time.

But why can’t we, for the very same reason, be equally lenient with Agence France Presse (AFP), the French news merchants who wrote and sold that story lucratively throughout the world?

No, we shan’t because AFP is one of the four Western news companies which rake in viscid money by selling to the world juicily written headline-making cock-and-bull stories on the Third World’s adversities, most of which can be traced to the Western world’s own 500-year buccaneering and brutalisation.

From the money made by selling exciting headlines based on the Third World’s adversities, AP, UPI, Reuters and AFP should be able to hire experts on English and place them at all strategic spots throughout the world.

AFP, for one, should know what verbal number a collective noun commands … and when