A silly question

Hello Affix,

The word "forest" is singular.
One forest.

So, "is" is the correct word here.

Two thirds of the forest is pine trees.

I know it might sound a bit wrong because "pine trees" is plural.

But I think "is" is correct.
Maybe somebody will correct me though.

"Is" is definitely correct - but really, the subject is "two thirds".

"Two thirds" is considered to be a single undivided quantity, not two units out of three. Some measurements are funny like that. Think of a pie chart that has two segments - One is 66.6% and that represents the amount of the forest planted in pine trees.



Cheers

John.

Good one John.
Thanks.
I need to learn all this.

btw:
I notice that sometimes after I post a reply to an unanswered question,
a reply by you has appeared while I was off in limbo slowly typing my post.

I do not mean to be duplicating your replies.
You are just faster at it than I am.
No offence intended.

Thank you all, I'll remember this vividly.

I've been mulling this over for a while. I think that my answer was not quite complete.

I still think that "Two-thirds" is the simple subject, but this kind of construction seems to be influenced by the whole subject. For instance.

"Two-thirds of my family are lunatics."
"Two-thirds of that banana is rotten."

We can see that it matters whether noun in the pr