Most Americans x The average American: Qual a diferença

"Most Americans drive to work" e "The average American drives to work" qual a diferença entre o emprego do verbo?

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Nesta aula, o professor Adir Ferreira, autor do livro "A Chave do Aprendizado da Língua Inglesa", nos conta como se tornou um Expert em pronúncia e dá várias dicas para você se comunicar melhor em inglês. ACESSAR AULA
4 respostas
Ordenar por: Data
PPAULO 6 49 1.3k
The majority of the American people.
The greater part of the American people.
The better part of the American people.

The usual American drives to work.
The normal American drives to work.
The ordinary American drives to work.
The standard American (citizen) drives to work.

Get the idea? :-)

Most - a maioria/a grande maioria.
The average - em média.
PPaulo entendi o significado do "Most" e do "The average" mas eu ainda não compreendo a mudança do verbo drives e drive.
Porque uma frase tem o drive com "s" e a outra sem!?
PPAULO 6 49 1.3k
Okay, this is a topic that goes under the heading "noun and verb agreement" (the old "spiel" of how countable and uncountable nouns goes with which form: plural or singular.
Well, this one is in the subset of special cases with said verbs - I mean plural or singular. So, an excerpt of a site goes with the following:

The following expressions

A number of, a couple of, a dozen of, a group of, the (a) majority, the (a) minority, a lot of, the rest of, most of, half of + plural noun/pronoun usually have plural verbs:
e.g. The majority of the people disagree with the new decision of the government.

There are a couple of children outside. A number of us are worried about it.


This brings us back to your case, if it was the majority of the American people (see? A "majority" is a group that we consider as an "are" verb -that is a "plural verb". So it takes a verb without an "s" with the third person singular.

The opposite with "news" that is singular with English agreement - "good news is good news (nenhuma notícia é por si só boa notícia).

Okay, now with the "average". In that case, it takes a singular verb
The average American works longer hours than the average German...
PPAULO 6 49 1.3k
Although, with "an average of" it would be a different can of worms:
There were/was an average of 34 incidents.

Same goes with sentences with the word "total".

Ref. forum.wordreference