My brother is a highschooler. His mid-term English-language exam is early next month. His teacher gave him an assignment in preperation for the exam. One of the questions given is:
(Bears – bananas – broccoli) is sweet fruit.
I called the teacher telling him that none of the choices make a correct sentence: Broccoli is a vegetable, bears are animals, and bananas should be "banana" to be in agreement with the singular verb is. However, he keeps arguing bananas is the correct choice.
Edit
His argument is that "bananas" refers to the substance that makes up the fruit, rather than the units, pretty much as chicken refers to the substance, or flesh, in " I like chicken" – not chickens. So he says bananas is equal to chicken in this example.
Best Answer
I want to debunk his argument. He agrees that we'd say, "I like chicken" (not chickens) – but that is the singular form of the word. So I wonder why he thinks we'd switch to the plural, and say the very ungrammatical, "Bananas is sweet fruit." He is dishing out bad guidance here.
I agree with Andrew; these are correct ways to say this:
Bananas are a sweet fruit.
A banana is a sweet fruit.
This one is also valid:
(Here, the definite article the indicates we are referring to all bananas, not one particular banana.)
One could even say:
I think both of those are less common, but they are both grammatical.
But the one he is using:
Bananas is sweet fruit.should be avoided in all cases.
Going back to his chicken argument, I can say either one of these:
But I would not say, "Chickens is healthy meat," nor would I say, "Bananas is sweet fruit."