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Anonymous Posted 13 years ago
Grammar

Have vs. has

I've been spending a little time on some UK based forums researching an upcoming trip, and noticed something peculiar...and I'm not sure if it's proper or not.

It seems to be that a great of people in the UK use "have" when it sounds like "has" would be correct...but I know how something sounds is basically meaningless, so here is an example:

"Air Canada have stopped letting you select seats prior to online check-in."

To my ear, "Air Canada" is referring to a single company. "Air Canada has stopped..." sounds correct, but is it? Or is "have" actually correct?

I notice it a lot also when listening to UK football broadcasts, i.e. "Chelsea have been attacking more in the last 5 minutes," etc.

Any thoughts?
  

Top answer

In the UK the convention is usually to treat teams, corporations, and other organized groups of people as plural nouns, so those are all correct in BrE.

— CSnyder

  • In the UK the convention is usually to treat teams, corporations, and other organized groups of people as plural nouns, so those are all correct in BrE.
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2 Answers
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In the UK the convention is usually to treat teams, corporations, and other organized groups of people as plural nouns, so those are all correct in BrE.
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It's not unusual in British English. Or in Canadian.
It shows that the speaker is thinking of the entity as made up of a group of people.
eg The team have . . .
eg The government have . . .
eg IBM have . . .
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