La plupart des gens ne travaillent pas le week-end.

Sentence Discussions French
#1
English Translation

Most people don’t work on the weekend.

Wouldn’t this be a singular verb since “la plupart” is singular?

#2

I’ve checked, because it didn’t seem wrong to me, but wouldn’t have been able to explain why (and since it sound the same when speaking…). But, as it stands, it is masculine plural when “la plupart” is alone, and agrees with the complement when its not. So

  • La plupart ne travaillent pas le WE
  • La plupart de ma vie est chiante (singular femenine because “ma vie” is so)
  • La plupart de mon temps est consacré à mes projets. (singular masculine because “mon temps” is so)
  • La plupart des gens sont beaux (because “des gens” is masculine plural)
  • La plupart des personnes sont belles (because “des personnes” is femenine plural)

cf « la plupart est » ou « la plupart sont » ? - Orthographe Projet Voltaire

#3

That’s wild! Thanks so much for your thorough explanation.

I was curious, so I found another source talking about singular collective nouns with modifiers:
https://www.gymglish.com/en/frantastique/french-grammar/verb-agreement-special-cases

So it seems that the verb will agree with the modifier, but that other singular collective nouns will take a singular verb when they don’t have a modifying plural clause.

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