English - None was or were?

By FADZILLAH AMIN

Which is the correct answer for each of the sentences below? Can you explain why?

a) Don’t drink the water unless it (is boiled/was boiled).

b) None of the men (was/were) there.

c) When the firemen arrived at the scene, the shophouses (were/had been) burned to the ground.

d) The train to Kuala Lumpur (arrives/is arriving) in half an hour.

e) Nothing but rain and clouds (is/are) in the sky.

f) He washes his hands prior to (serve/serving) his customers.

– Seng Kong



a) The correct sentence is “Don’t drink the water unless it is boiled.”

Here, “boiled”, the past participle form of “boil”, is actually an adjective and indicates the state of the water. So it is used with the simple present tense verb “is”, and the sentence has a similar form to “Don’t drink the water unless it is clean.”, for example.

You can also use “boiled” before the noun, as in “boiled water”.

If you want to use “boiled” as part of a verb in your sentence, you could use the present perfect passive tense, as in “Don’t drink the water unless it has been boiled.”, which doesn’t indicate when it was boiled.

You can also use the past tense passive “was boiled”, but you’ll have to indicate a time, e.g. “Don’t drink the water unless it was boiled less than 24 hours ago.”

b) In British English, you use a singular verb in “None of the men was there.” in a formal style, and a plural verb “None of the men were there.” in an informal style.

If “none of” is followed by an uncountable noun, a singular verb is used, e.g. in “None of the fear was left in her.”

c) The correct sentence is “When the firemen arrived at the scene, the shophouses had been burned to the ground.”

The past perfect tense “had been burned” (here it is in the passive form) is used to indicate a time before another past time, i.e “ When the firemen arrived ...” The simple past tense “were burned” (also in the passive form here) is not used.

“Burned”, by the way, is the American English spelling for the British English “burnt”.

d) Both are correct. You can use the simple present tense or the present continuous tense to talk about a future event that is part of a timetable.

e) The correct sentence is: “Nothing but rain and clouds are in the sky.”

If the subject is a phrase consisting of “nothing but” followed by a noun, the verb agrees with the noun. If “nothing but” is followed by two nouns, whether of the same kind or not, a plural verb is used. In other words, “nothing but” noun phrases follow the usual rules of subject-verb agreement.

In your sentence, there are two nouns after “nothing but” — “rain”, an uncountable noun, and “clouds”, a plural noun. The verb is therefore plural. But let me give examples of some of the possible variations in subject-verb agreement:

i. Nothing but rain is in the sky. (“rain” is an uncountable noun)

ii. Nothing but an aeroplane is seen flying under the clear blue sky. (“aeroplane” is a singular noun)

iii. Nothing but rain and lightning are seen during the storm. (“rain” and “lightning” are both uncountable nouns)

iv. Nothing but an aeroplane and a large bird are seen flying under the clear blue sky. (“aeroplane” and “bird” are both singular countable nouns)

v. Nothing but clouds are seen in the sky. (“clouds” is a plural noun)

f) “He washes his hands prior to serving his customers.” is the correct sentence.

What comes after “prior to” (which means “before”) is a noun or a gerund (an –ing verb acting like a noun) and “serving” here is a gerund.

You can replace the gerund with a noun, in a sentence like “He washes his hands prior to a meal.”

Which floor?

1. WHAT is the difference between “the bank is opened” and “the bank is open”?

2. Do we say “ground floor” or “first floor” in Malaysia?

– Ahmad Nafis



1. “The bank is opened” is ungrammatical. But when a new bank has started operations for the first time, we can say, for example, “The bank was opened to the public at 9.30am yesterday.”

But when we say “the bank is open”, we mean that customers can come into the bank at that time. For example, we can say: “The bank is open from 9.30am to 4pm.”

“Open” is an adjective, but “was opened” is a past passive verb.

2. It depends on whether you are using British English or American English. In British English, a multi-storey building starts with the “ground floor” at ground level. In American English, such a floor is called the “first floor”.

Since some Malaysians use British English and some American English, it is hard to make a general statement about all Malaysians.

New tie style

I FOUND this at the Kepong Carrefour hypermarket while shopping for a tie for my brother.

Are there any other spelling errors?

– Shiaou Jern Syee

“TAI” should be spelt “TIE”; “ASST.” is a strange abbreviation for “assorted”, because it is the usual one for “assistant”; and “colour” should be in the plural after “assorted” to make the phrase “assorted colours”.

“NP” should mean “normal price”.

American quirk

I THINK “the Brit-Yank divide”, as Dr Lim Chin Lam calls it in one of his columns, provides spice and variety to the English language and is not a bad thing.

There is, however, at least one American habit which I find hard to get used to. A British English speaker would say, “I am a fastidious person but, as far as food is concerned, I am indifferent.”

An American English speaker is more likely to say, “I am a fastidious person but, as far as food, I am indifferent.” The latter drops “is concerned”. Am I alone in feeling distressed over this American quirk?

– I. Ho

I am sorry, but I haven’t heard this particular American quirk. Would readers who have heard this like to comment on their reactions?

Was to have taken

PLEASE check the sentence below to see if there is anything wrong:

The Form Five student of SM Sulaiman was to have taken her SPM examinations this year.

The use of the present perfect (passive) to refer to a future event in this case is quite confusing. Please enlighten me on this.

– Sun BM

The sentence does not use the present perfect passive, but the present perfect infinitive (“to have taken”). This tense when used after “was/were” is meant to say that a planned future event (in this case, the student taking her SPM examinations) would not take place.

Similar structures can be seen in the following extracts from the Internet: “ROYLE Family star Caroline Aherne has walked out on her new sitcom ... she was to have taken on a directorial role. Now the entire project is in doubt.” (http://www.citylife.co.uk/comedy/news/6868_caroline_quits_new_sitcom)

“It seems that Motorola’s handset division is too sick to spin off, and amid heavy losses and a bleak outlook for the phone market in 2009, the company has decided to postpone the plan to separate its devices operation, which was to have taken place in the third quarter of next year.” (http://www.rethink-wireless.com/index.asp?article_id=685&keywords=Texas20Instruments)