There are definitely some collective nouns we routinely treat as plural that are singular in the States: "staff" is the one I notice most often. "The staff is..." sounds wrong to me every time.
I think there's a distinction between "my family is" (acting as a unit, eg, "my family has abstained from Christmas for the last couple of years") and "my family are" (acting as a group of individuals, eg, "my family are all cranks and pedants"), but again, I don't know if that's just a Kiwi-ism.
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Date: 1/14/13 04:59 am (UTC)I think there's a distinction between "my family is" (acting as a unit, eg, "my family has abstained from Christmas for the last couple of years") and "my family are" (acting as a group of individuals, eg, "my family are all cranks and pedants"), but again, I don't know if that's just a Kiwi-ism.