In English there are some nouns that have plural form but are used with a singular verb:
economics, statistics, measles, maths etc.
Are there nouns like these in German?
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Sign up to join this communityIn English there are some nouns that have plural form but are used with a singular verb:
economics, statistics, measles, maths etc.
Are there nouns like these in German?
I think the question was to find only plural forms that are used with singular verbs. E.g. Masern is always used with plural verbs as in In unserer Schule sind die Masern ausgebrochen. Weihnachten and Ostern are correct examples: Ostern hat uns in diesem Jahr viel Freude bereitet. Weihnachten ist ein Fest für die ganze Familie. Here, Ostern and Weihnachten are used in the sense of Das Osterfest and Das Weihnachtsfest which are singular expressions.
According to Grimm's Wörterbuch, the singular forms Weihnachten and Pfingsten go back to old dative plural forms (Middle High German: (ze den) wîhen nahten, (ze den) pfingsten). Ostern also used to be a plural form (Singular: Oster) that developed into a new singular.