What's the path dependence story as to why British English refers to an organization in the plural form ("Google are...") while American English refers to it in the singular ("Google is...")?
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Same, and honestly I don’t think it’s that consistently applied in British English - sometimes “Entity X is”, sometimes “Entity X are”. But almost always “are” with sports teams.
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But sports teams usually have a plural name.
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Not in British football! A significant fraction, if not the vast majority of team names are place-based or with singular nouns - eg. Manchester United, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Accrington Stanley, Glasgow Celtic - yet fans and press usually say/write “Man United *are*...” etc.
End of conversation
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