Cricket
Votre serviteuse regarde du cricket. Et ne comprend rien.
I’ve retreated down the pub, to relax after a long day. There’s a TV set running, showing something called “the Ashes”. And of course, me being a total cricket moron, I don’t understand a bit of what’s going on. In the beginning it looked like England was winning “that little urn”, with “three wickets left”, but these three wickets take an awfully long time. Everybody’s dressed in white, so I can’t discern who’s on which side.
But I understand (most of) the English (except the comments about the players’ achievements). And I’m hearing a whole lot of unreduced thes. And just two minutes ago, one of the commentators said, very clearly, “for all intensive purposes”. I couldn’t help laughing out in delight (or amusement), drawing the looks of those who were actually watching the proceedings.
UPDATE: England has have won.
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Technorati (tags): anglais, cricket, eggcorns, English, language
il est bien marrant ton blog :p
You were correct first time - England is a singular noun and therefore “England has won” is technically correct.
@Nigel: I’m aware that the singular would have been correct. And if I had really hesitated, I’d just have deleted “has” instead of rendering it in strike-through style. This was an allusion to the fact that during The Ashes series, you could usually tell if a headline (on the BBC news site, or the Guardian) was about cricket or politics from the grammatical number of “England”.
For example, England fear Lahore bombings is about the English cricket team, not the English nation or any political spokesperson for England.