to be

  • Правильно Coins is fun to collect. или are fun to collect?

  • Coins are fun to collect. Coin collecting is fun.

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  • если б все так просто...

  • Интересный вопрос. А в самом деле: как будет правильно?
    Что-то мне подсказывает, что если исходить из фразы " It is fun to collect coins", То сказать " Coins is fun to collect" будет правильно.

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  • В решебнике is. Они, видимо, исходили из этой фразы, но подтекста нет, отдельные фразы.

  • No way. The verb should agree with the subject (and the subject is plural and cannot be considered otherwise ). If you want it single, use "Coin collecting ".

  • Yes, there is a way when there is a will. Sometimes it is the noun that is AFTER the verb TO BE, not BEFORE it, that the noun agrees with. In this case, we use the form IS even though the subject of the sentence is plural.
    Many years ago we used to have coins like you do now. Then the reform came, coins were abolished in Belarus, and we began using paper money only. We had been using that kind of money for many years, rather decades, before they decided to go for the denomination. That procedure, apart from bringing the money that looked like yours, also brought back the coins, so we have began using coins again.
    We can say that coins IS not a good idea for our people in general and me in particular becase over a period of many years we grew accustomed to using paper and not metal as our national currency. Now it IS the coins that give people here in Belarus a lot of headache as some of them are so inconspicuous that it is rather difficult to tell one coin from another.
    So, we can say that coins IS something that causes a lot of inconvinience to our people because for many years we have not been using them, even have not seen them. Coins IS something that Belarussians have begun learning and growing accustomed to of late.

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  • Great thanks! Very interesting info.

  • V., that's quite different. You are using the noun as a substitution for the word "problem", so that's the same agreement of a subject and a copula verb "to be", when the noun or a group are considered to be an entity. Like in "bread and butter is my usual breakfast ". One can always mean that, but it's never the rule. That's your individual perception of things in a certain situation. Thanks for the discussion. Love it very much.Btw, the copula verb never agrees with the complement in the clause.