Please settle a dispute?

Question

which is correct to write : "A variety of intersting creatures live in the dry Australianout back" or "A variety of intersting creatures are living in the dry Australian"
please explain why....

Answer 1

The first one is more correct. The word Australian in this case is used as an adjective and needs to have a noun following it. The latter statement would be like say the cat haid a red... a red what??

Answer 2

"A variety of interesting creatures live in the dry Australian outback" is the best phrase to use. You can then go on to either list them or offer an outline of a particular animal and its habitat/lifestyle.
The second phrase does not really scan as English. "A variety of interesting creatures are living in the dry Australian outback" reads well but is not correct. It suggests the animals have moved into the area from somewhere else rather than using it as a natural habitat for their species.
I would use the first phrase.

Answer 3

There both wrong its: A variety of intersting creatures live in the dry Australian outback
Other people have said why, Australian outback= place
Australian= person

Answer 4

Neither is correct:
The first should be "A variety of creatures IS living...", and the second should be "A variety of interesting creatures IS living in dry Australia".

Nouns of multitude ( such as 'variety' and particularly 'number') cause confusion. In your examples, the subject of the sentence is 'variety', and is singular. The noun 'creatures' describes what the variety is. This may or may not be your intention.

The classic case is 'A number of walls needs painting'. It sounds clumsy, but is grammatically correct. It is non-intuitive, because in this case, it is obviously that the walls (plural) are what the the sentence refers to. (In your case, you may be referring to the creatures, not the variety).

These days, no one would object to 'A number of walls need painting'; but there are cases when the noun of multitude IS intended to be the subject (such as 'A collection of art works WAS stolen', when it is obvious the sentence refers to the whole collection.

It is best to re-construct the sentence to avoid ambiguous nouns of multitude, such as "Several (or many) interesting creatures live ...", or if you want to emphasise the variety , something like "Various interesting creatures..."

Answer 5

You are all wrong!

"A variety of interesting creatures LIVES in the dry Australian outback".

OR

"Various interesting creatures live in the dry Australian outback."

Variety is a singular noun, so takes a singular verb.

Answer 6

"A variety of Interesting creatures live in the dry australian outback" because the other makes no sense... "the dry australian what?"

Answer 7

i go bush all the time and each day less and less creatures live in the bush, koalas are hard too see up the gum but the kangaroos arn't that hard too see and there good dog meat too keep them strong for the boars and completely useless for anything else but standing in the middle of the road and wrecking cars on the pacific highway

Answer 8

The first one. Australian outback is a place. Australian is a person living in Australia.

Answer 9

The first, 'are living' somehow sounds as if that might change - then again maybe that makes the second technically correct but the first sounds better.

Answer 10

The first one is correct. I would think that it's because it's using "live" as another word for "inhabit" or "dwell."

The second sentence is using "are living" as more of a literal thing, i.e., not dead. It just doesn't flow.