# Adobe HAVE?



## camner (Nov 6, 2015)

I've noticed that when Victoria writes about Adobe, she writes "Adobe HAVE..."  The first time I saw it that way, I thought to myself, "That's strange...Victoria  is a professional writer, which means she must care a lot about how she expresses herself," but then again, even careful writers let things get away once in a while.

Then, I read the same construction in another of her posts, and decided she must be doing it on purpose.  Shortly thereafter, John Beardsworth did exactly the same thing, which finally led me to what is likely the truth, which is that this is another (of very many!) examples of what Churchill was talking about when he described Brits and Yanks as "Two people divided by a common language."

But that led to another question, which has to do with exactly when the British consider something to be a plural noun like Adobe when on the other side of the pond we consider it to be a singular noun.  Is it only for companies/organizations with a lot of people that make them up (such as Adobe)?  What would be the case used in a sentence that starts with "The Camner family..."?  Is it HAS or HAVE?  Is there an easy rule of thumb?

[This reminds me of something quite funny that occurred on my only trip to the UK a couple of years ago.  My wife and I headed out in the evening to a pub for some post dinner snack and wanted to order just a side of vegetables that was on the menu, but the menu didn't list what vegetables made up the item.  We asked, and were told something that upon the careful listening that we had to do throughout our month in the UK sounded very much like "carrots, peas, potatoes, and Swedes."  We asked the barman to repeat it, and he said the same thing again.  OK, carrots, peas, and potatoes, we got.  But Swedes?  We had encountered some odd (to us, anyway) gastronomical items there on the British Isles, but we hadn't heard that the Brits were into cannibalism.  We asked what a Swede was, and the poor barman tried to describe it to us, without any success.  A little later he came back and told us he had Googled it, and it was a "rutabaga."  I really have no idea how I would describe a rutabaga.  Turns out there are all sorts of names for this vegetable over there...see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutabaga.  Who knew? We had such fun on that trip.  We'll have to get back there some time....]


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## johnbeardy (Nov 6, 2015)

I remember reading about the different usage many years ago, and while "Adobe has" doesn't sound wrong to my ears, I would always use "have". The same would apply to families.

Maybe we vary depending on the context? So "the team is breaking up" sounds right to me, stressing its former unity, but even then "are" would sound right.

I was once very confused about what a kohl rabi may be.

John


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## davidedric (Nov 6, 2015)

And the Scots call swedes turnips, or neeps


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## sty2586 (Nov 6, 2015)

And when I want potato CHIPS in England, I have to order CRISPS and then I get a bag with the word CHIPS on it.
very strange for a stranger.


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## Ian.B (Nov 6, 2015)

I'm trying to process the first post in LR; when I succeed I will give some thoughts  :bluegrin:


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## Victoria Bampton (Nov 7, 2015)

I haven't a clue which is technically correct, but "Adobe is" always feels weird to me.  I'd also say "Apple are releasing", "Marks and Spencers are having a sale", "the Camner family are going out for a meal" and "the Camner family have a dog".  

You're probably right about it being a UK/US divide.  I'll try to watch out for that.  There may also be an element of knowing the individual people who work at Adobe, so I think of them as a group of people rather than a single corporation.


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## Johan Elzenga (Nov 7, 2015)

I don't think it's a UK/US thing; in other languages you see the same problem. 'Adobe' is a name, so you can't talk about one Adobe or two Adobes. That means that it's probably up to the speaker how he or she see that name; plural or singular. Words like 'family' or 'team' are singular. The plural form also exists: families, teams. A team has a project to work on, two teams have a project they both work on.


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## Victoria Bampton (Nov 7, 2015)

I googled it and the consensus was "British English treats collective nouns (corporations, departments, etc.) as plural. American English treats them as singular. "


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## Johan Elzenga (Nov 7, 2015)

OK, interesting. That means that my native language (Dutch) is like American English in this respect. Does this also apply to a word like 'family' then?


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## Victoria Bampton (Nov 7, 2015)

Yup, family too. According to this, both singular and plural are acceptable in British English, but American English uses singular. And I must remember that, since I usually stick to US spellings, at least in my books (I know I mix it up when writing quickly on the forums!!)

Reference: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/09/agreement-over-collective-nouns/


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## Johan Elzenga (Nov 7, 2015)

Interesting indeed! I tend to use American English too, and in Dutch people would never say "Mijn familie hebben" ('My family have'), so that's why 'my family have' sounds odd to me. What you do see (probably also in English, on both sides of the Atlantic) is that people make mistakes with combinations like 'a group of animals'. Because they see 'animals', you often see that they use 'have'. 'A group' is singular however (well, at least in Dutch it is singular...).


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## Johan Elzenga (Nov 7, 2015)

Come to think of it: in Dutch we would definitely consider 'Adobe' and 'Apple' to be singular too, and that's not because you can have many apples...


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## Victoria Bampton (Nov 7, 2015)

Unusual for the UK to be breaking the rules of the language eh  I've learned something new from it though, so I'm glad Camner brought it up.


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## NJHeart2Heart (Nov 9, 2015)

Victoria Bampton said:


> I haven't a clue which is technically correct, but "Adobe is" always feels weird to me.  I'd also say "Apple are releasing", "Marks and Spencers are having a sale", "the Camner family are going out for a meal" and "the Camner family have a dog".
> 
> You're probably right about it being a UK/US divide.  I'll try to watch out for that.  There may also be an element of knowing the individual people who work at Adobe, so I think of them as a group of people rather than a single corporation.



So funny because to me, I would definitely say "Adobe is", "Apple is" (I'm in the United States).  I would also say 'the Camner family is", because family unifies them under one entity, but in this context, "the Camners are coming for lunch" will use "are" because they are referring to many individuals.  To me, "Apple" and "Adobe" are companies - unified groups referred to as "one". 

Yes.. the plurality of the noun makes the difference...BUT..

"United States" provides a bit of a dilemma though, similar to Johanns comment regarding "group of animals".  I think it would depend on context.  United States brings to mind both ONE country made up of individuals (like Adobe, or family), but also of many separate states.


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