Forum: Author Hangout

Anyone know why the collective noun "Taliban" is always used with a plural verb in articles (e.g., the Taliban are, the Taliban have)? You would say "Congress is" (not are) although Congress is an organization made up of many people. You would say "the army is" although it's made up of many soldiers.

Sometimes a collective noun is used with a plural verb like "The couple are going on separate vacations" because you're talking about the multiple individuals within the couple doing independent things. But in most cases "couple" would have a singular verb, such as, "The couple is going to Hawaii for their 25th anniversary."

But I always see Taliban with a plural verb.

The Taliban is the name of a collective group of tribes, thus it's always a plural term. When referring to an individual sub-group the name of the tribe involved is used, and for a single individual their personal name is used.

Has anyone else's Google changed recently? I now get a rectangular box for the search text and the fonts and colours of the results have changed. But, most annoyingly, there's no longer a count of the results.

I searched for "the taliban is" and "the taliban are". Both were found aplenty but there was no clue as to which is the most popular.

AJ

I found this:

Ahmed Rashid's authoritative and fascinating book "Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia" (Yale, $14.95) provides some answers.

During the early 1990s, Afghanistan was a bubbling cauldron of hatred, chaos and destruction as warlords battled fiercely for their fiefdoms. Alarmed by this turmoil, several Afghani groups forged a coalition with the proclaimed goals of restoring peace, disarming the population and defending the Islamic character of Afghanistan.

Because most members of this coalition were students at "madrassas" (Arabic for Islamic schools), they named their organization the "Taliban" -- the plural of the Arabic word for student of Islam -- "talib." So "Taliban" literally means "students of Islam."

As with many collective nouns, "Taliban" should be treated as a singular when referring to the regime as a single entity ("the Taliban is resisting") and as a plural when referring to its individuals ("the Taliban are fighting among themselves").

Yet most publications jump from singular to plural without apparent rhyme or reason. The New York Times, for instance, has reported, "The Taliban have a core of hardened fighters," and "There is no sign that the Taliban is about to crack." Similarly, Rashid's book moves randomly from plural to singular: "the Taliban were at a crossroads" vs. "the Taliban has undertaken.

So, linguistically as well as politically, the Taliban remains something of an enigma.

(I bolded two significant sentences.)