"Třicet osm dnů je devět set dvanáct hodin?"
Translation:Thirty-eight days is nine hundred and twelve hours?
11 Comments
When the time periods are referenced as an interval we use the singular: Five days is too long. Twenty-five minutes is a new world record. Ten minutes is six hundred seconds.
75
I have commented on this before. By not accepting the correct English form ARE here, DL is imposing the Czech usage of singular verbs, which a DL moderator has agreed was nonsense. For someone whose language is English, seeing "38 IS" is bizzare, even if some of the moderators can find articles in magazines in which such constructions appear. There are times when the words amount or sum are ommitted but implied. and then the singular verb appears, but usually it sounds very wrong.
And I HAVE replied to you before and you did not care. Why should I care to answer this time? I will just give you a link https://staff.washington.edu/marynell/grammar/agreement.html
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Everyone agrees that SOMETIMES a singular verb can be used with multiple objects, and in the reference you provided she gives such examples. However, is most (all?) of those examples there is an implied sum, amount, period, etc. To an English speaker like me some of the English sentences that DL accepts exclusively sound odd, and therefore DL should accept the plural verbs in those cases.
Most often, both singular and plural is accepted. If it is not, report the complete actual sentence and use "My answer should have been accepted.".
Thanks, but the link shows me that it should read "are". Neiher side (subject or object) references a single unit. Let me give another example to explain how I understand the mentioned "agreement":
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this flock has more than twenty birds. [compare with the "soccer team"example]
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more than twenty birds is a flock. [compare with the "crackers and cheese" example]
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twenty birds are too many. [compare with "singular plural agreement"]
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twenty birds are eighty claws that scratch. [no special agreement for this one]
And therefore I would expect that singular verb has to mention a "single entity", which is usually denoted by the indefinite article "a":
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a day has 24 hours
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a week has 168 hours
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a fortnight has 336 hours
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38 days is a long time
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38 days are 912 hours
- 75
I don't think that there is any real disagreement here, as I indicated above. However, your very last example uses ARE (as it should, since both days and hours are plural), while the DL approved sentence uses IS.
This sentence is not even a question in english. It must start with 'Are...'. Continuing loosing points because of such irregularies :)
