Learn English – “Numbers” or “number?” Which sentence is correct

grammatical-numbernumbers

Which sentence is correct? Why?

  1. In 2000, the number of Vietnamese students studied in Russia and France was around 3 million and 3.5 million respectively.

  2. In 2000, the numbers of Vietnamese students studied in Russia and France were around 3 million and 3.5 million respectively.

Best Answer

The short answer is that it should be in the singular. (I will explain this later.)

However, there is a better solution to this—one that is both syntactically correct and which sounds more natural:

In 2000, Vietnamese students who studied in Russia and France numbered around 3 million and 3.5 million, respectively.

This dispenses with the troublesome noun number, using instead the past tense of the verb number.

To explain why the example sentence is in the singular, consider its expanded version:

In 2000, the number of Vietnamese students who studied in Russia was around 3 million and the number of Vietnamese students who studied in France was around 3.5 million.

In both clauses, number is singular and so is the verb. Shortening it into a single clause with respectively doesn't change this essential fact in this particular case. (Even when X is plural, you can't say the numbers of X.)

In 2000, the number of Vietnamese students who studied in Russia and France was around 3 million and 3.5 million, respectively.

But in addition to the rephrasing I suggested at the start of my answer, there is another possibility:

In 2000, the total number of Vietnamese students who studied in Russia and France was around 6.5 million: 3 million and 3.5 million in the respective countries.

Related Topic