what does this statement mean? "We use the definite article in English before the names of countries that are

Question

plural in form".
WHAT does PLURAL IN FORM, mean? What exactly the word FORM, in here, means? I am confused. Thanks.

Answer 1

PLURAL - more than one
PLURAL IN FORM - more than one said with too many words

So for example, a country like Canada gets no 'The' in front of it, but a country like 'The Netherlands' does because it's 'lands' not 'land'.

Answer 2

Do you know what's singular vs. plural in Grammar? Here are expamples of singular/ plural nouns: name/ names, dog/ dogs, country/ countries. Plural nouns all end with an 's' (well, most of them do; there are exceptions like one fruit/ many fruit, one bacteria/ many bacteriae) and refer to MANY dogs, countries, names.

PLURAL IN FORM means the country has MANY states, islands, etc. The name of the country will say so. Ex: The Peoples Republic of China ( People is plural here); The United States of America (States is certainly plural);

Hope I got it right and explained it well. It's been awhile since I studied Grammar.
:)

Answer 3

Netherlands, for example is a plural, so we use the definite article "the," as in "the Netherlands."

Of course, that's a confusing one, since the same place is also called Holland, and the people who live there (and the language they speak) are called Dutch.

Answer 4

definite article is "the." an example of plural in form would be the philippine islands. We call the country "The Philippines."

Answer 5

"plural in form" means plural in structure. plural being multiples .. form being in structure of a sentence.. In English we use sentence structure.. like a tree with roots (words) .. the branch being the full sentence. Plural inn form is basically, multiple nouns within in the structure, like a plum tree.

Answer 6

We can/do say America.
We do not say "Americas".
Must use, The Americas. Plural.
(South, Mid, and North)


Europe.
Countries of Europe. Wrong.
The countries of Europe. Plural.
OR, The European countries.

Asia. OK
Asian countries. Wrong.
The Asian countries. Plural.

"The" is a definite article.

Answer 7

Say, for instance, the Bahamas. (I'm assuming you already know definate article is "the".) Some countries constitute a plural if they are made up of several sections, though it's grouped as a single country. Hope that clears it up!

P.S. tsk, doing homework on a friday night. Tsk to me, too, I'm on yahoo answers on a friday night!

Answer 8

Like THE Bahamas, THE Netherlands, THE Phillippines, THE United States