When studying nouns and their singular and plural forms, you must have seen the difference between British English (BrE) and American English (AmE) with respect to number. One such difference is reference to group nouns, in particular, in connection with teams. You may remember that whereas in one variety you use a singular form of the verb (and also a personal pronoun in the singular to refer to the group) in the other variety you use a plural form of the verb (and the corresponding plural pronoun). So, newspaper headlines announcing a team win could read Argentina wins the match or Argentina win the match depending on the variety in question. Do you remember which is which? Check out in the two news reports below published today. This is also important from the point of view of pronunciation in that, as you already know, the way the suffixes -s and -es are pronounced differs on the basis of the final sound of the root word. After reading the reports, can you say which nouns and verbs from them have a voiced or voiceless ending, and which are pronounced with an extra syllable at the end?
Holland vs. Brazil in The Independent (BrE)
