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Which of the following is correct:

  1. One in 5 people in that area are Chinese
  2. One in 5 people in that area is a Chinese

I am confused as different resources provide a different answer.

One of the resources says that people is not the subject of the sentence. One is the subject and in 5 people is a prepositional phrase. Since “one” is singular, therefore the correct usage is
“One in 5 people in that area is a Chinese.”

However, I am not convinced with this argument. I have found the other usage almost everywhere else.

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  • 1
    Please, please cite the resources and the explanations (or rules) they supply. It will show the community you have researched, and it might be interesting to see if how different resources approach the problem.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 8:59
  • @Mari-LouA I have updated my question to add some more details.
    – nish
    Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 9:09
  • Both are possible. The subject has the plural "people" as head, so a plural verb would follow the simple agreement rule. But in this case, the verb can be singular as well as plural, where the optional singular override is clearly motivated by the presence of one.
    – BillJ
    Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 9:10
  • @BillJ I would like to argue that we are not talking about one person. We are talking about a group of people. But I am not sure about it.
    – nish
    Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 9:13
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    You didn't cite the resources. You haven't told us the titles of the books. Are they written in a foreign language? Interestingly, you wrote One of the resources says. You didn't use the plural form of the verb say.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 9:13

1 Answer 1

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The sentence can be split up as so:

[One in 5] [people] [in that area] [are] [Chinese]

  • [One in five] - describes/mopdified the subject "people"
  • [in that area] -just gives us a location that modifies the subject and tell us "what kind of people"
  • [are] - verb, must agree with main subject "people"
  • [Chinese] - is the object and irrelevant for your specific question.

"People" is the plural of person, therefore the correct answer is "are" and thus

(1) One in 5 people in that area are Chinese

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  • If we expanded your answer, the logical inference would be that "One person in that area ARE Chinese" Hmm... One person in five IS Chinese or For every five people, one IS Chinese
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 9:29
  • No. "Person" is singular. So "one person is Chinese"
    – SonOfPingu
    Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 9:51
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    Yes, one in 5 functions as a determiner to the head word people. And I agree that plural are follows the simple agreement rule. But singular agreement is also possible here partly because of the presence of one and partly because of the synonymy with One person in 5 in that area is Chinese, where singular person is head.
    – BillJ
    Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 10:27
  • Yes, you are right. I was still thinking of the original phrase with "people" not a new phrase "one person in 5"
    – SonOfPingu
    Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 10:37

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