In the TV show “Friends”, Chandler says, “Now, there’s two reasons”. Is that grammatically correct?
This question, found on Quora, asks about the following structure.
[There] + [be]
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Formal language
In formal language, [ … there are two reasons … ] is OK, although [ … two reasons exist … ] is more precise and probably better in most formal contexts.
[ … there is two reasons … ] or [ … there’s two reasons … ] would be bad style.
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Informal language
[ … there’s two reasons … ] and [ … there are two reasons … ] are both fine. Occasionally the second is written [ … there’re two reasons … ] if quoting speech when [are] is pronounced as a “schwa”.
[ … There is two reasons … ] (without stressed [is]) would be odd, as the full [is] is formal, but the grammar is not canonical.
We could imagine the following conversation: “There’s only one reason, there isn’t two reasons.” – “But there is two reasons! ….. ” – The second sentence sounds a little odd because it’s more obvious that the grammar is “wrong”; normally we would reply “But there are two reasons! ….. ”