ESL General English Grammar Questions

Re: Was or Were?

Marius Hancu — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 14:37:04 GMT

Google hits:

9 for "it were mike and"
27,700 for "it was mike and"

Re: Was or Were?

Yoong Liat — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 14:34:23 GMT

Diego SimÃ£o wrote:

There is a sentence in My extracurricular English book:

It were Mike and Madeleine that went into the room.

I think it should be "were".

The verb should be 'was' so that it is in agreement with 'It'. (It was ... )

Re: Was or Were?

Kooyeen — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 14:00:43 GMT

Hi,
I think it's definitley "was". The other, "were", doesn't make sense there. There are no conditionals, so it's just a past tense. And it agrees with "it" because that's the way "it's/it was" is used idiomatically:

It's John who decided to go.
It's my parents who decided to go.
It was Jenny who told me.
It was her friends who told me.

Notice that the verb remains singular even if what follows is in the plural. When someone knocks at the door... Who is it? It's her, Jenny... It's them, our friends...

Was or Were?

Diego SimÃ£o — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 13:44:22 GMT

There is a sentence in My extracurricular English book:

It were Mike and Madeleine that went into the room.

I think it should be "were".

The whole is :

It was Mike and Madeleine that went into the room.

I wonder if it should be were or was, thank you for telling me the language points about it.