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dieggsylast Tuesday at 5:31 PM2 repliesview on HN

It's quite common in UK English (and maybe others, I don't know), to refer to "singular" or collective non-people entities (such as companies, I know Gmail itself isn't one) using the plural form of verbs.

This isn't in my natural speech, but I quite like it; it seems to kind of imply "the people behind [company]" rather than anthropomorphizing the company itself. ...generally though I think it's just colloquial convention and not that deep.


Replies

HPsquaredlast Tuesday at 5:40 PM

I wonder how this language quirk changes how people think about the statement "a corporation is a person".

anal_reactorlast Tuesday at 6:06 PM

There's something funny about someone trying to be smart and pointing out a typo or some other minor irrelevant error only to be proven completely wrong.

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