Subject-Verb agreement with compound subjects

[Geoff Bannister]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, Miles <d2dMiles at ...> wrote:

Miles:
> May I add something that I feel to be similar? It's from the PS movie, in 
> the first flying lesson Madam Hooch says:
> "I see a single broom in the air, the ONE riding it will find THEMSELVES out 
> of Hogwarts before THEY can say 'Quidditch'!"
> 
> Doesn't it feel odd for a native speaker to switch to plural, although the 
> sentence starts addressing single persons? I asked a native speaker who 
> assured me that the sentence is correct, because both male and female 
> persons are addressed.

Geoff:
Sounds as if your native speaker is an advocate of this wretched PC English 
whereby you can't use "he" to represent a unisex situation. This gives rise 
to such cumbersome usage as "chairperson" or the even uglier "chair". 

And, as you suggest, it leads to this peculiarity of switching to plural forms. 
In certain situations, you can use "one" in a generalising comment, rather as 
the Germans have "man" (to the non-German this is not the same as "Mann"). 
For example, "To go to London, one could use the train" but this is a different 
context to the one Madam Hooch uses.

It's just another example of the way in which we are expected to use 
convoluted English so that there is absolutely no chance of offending 
someone's sensibilities.

Taking Madam Hooch's comment, I might have put it as: 
"I see a single broom in the air, the person riding it will be out of Hogwarts 
before he or she can say 'Quidditch'!"

Old-fashioned, non-PC? Maybe. But I prefer the more accurate grammar.