@JLeslie The confusion is this:
You said:
” ‘Family’ is plural. ” Then you said: “I have never heard or seen my family are crazy,” which contradicts your first sentence. ‘Are’ is used for plural words while ‘is’ used for singular.
We go on talking English normally so we don’t notice things like this, only students when learning. When they see these things and mention it to me, everything conflicts in my mind and I end up totally confused.
@jleslie @iamthemob you got it right, ‘it’ isn’t used with people. So I REALLY don’t think ‘it’ is ever used with family. It sounds very rude.
@iamthemob Actually in that sentence (which my student made), the speaker is not with the family, since she lives alone but is talking about them. So we isn’t used in that case.
@wascry Yeah, I think ‘team’ is another case like family. However, ‘the team are playing right’ is not correct, although you may have heard it around. it’s ‘the team IS playing right.’
Stinley and Morphail explained it really good too. As i said, we never stop to notice these things, but when we do, we are like ‘what the?’
hehe