small questions

[SitangCampus]

In my recent reading of books written by educated native speakers of English (not those who live in other countries than the UK and the US), I find sentences like "There's a lot of people ...." many times and I think they might be wrong, "is" should have been "are".

Another question is that here is a sentence: We would like you to give a speech at our meeting, starting at 9:00 am on October 8th. I want to know which starts at 9 am, the meeting or the speech? How can I ascertain the right choice?

Please give me your valuable advices, thank you very much.

[Josef Essberger]

In my recent reading of books written by educated native speakers of English (not those who live in other countries than the UK and the US), I find sentences like "There's a lot of people ...." many times and I think they might be wrong, "is" should have been "are".

In informal writing:
There's a lot of people...
There are lots of people...

[Josef Essberger]

Another question is that here is a sentence: We would like you to give a speech at our meeting, starting at 9:00 am on October 8th. I want to know which starts at 9 am, the meeting or the speech? How can I ascertain the right choice?

Impossible to say though one might guess that the meeting starts at 9.

[sassybear]

i personally think "there's a lot of people" should be right??? and the meeting probably starts at 9. not sure about it. if you are not sure, just arrive there one hour earlier lol. then i can assure you that won't be anything going wrong.

[SitangCampus]

Some meetings have time limits for each speaker, if anyone has his speech exceed the time, he may be asked to stop. I remembered being halted a few times at the meetings, that was very embarrassing.

[Josef Essberger]

one hour early lol! They should phrase it more clearly!^^