[Amnell]

"Who here is a grammar nerd?"
*raises hand sheepishly*

I gotta rap on this "there's vs there're" issue again, I'm afraid n_n;;; .

Even though English is pretty slim on verb conjugation as far as Indo-European languages go, we DO have rules for conjugating verbs. "Be" (to be) does conjugate. It goes to "are" for second person aspect and also for plural number. It goes to "is" for third person aspect and also singular number. Then, it goes to "am" for first person aspect with singular number. Verbs agree with the subject that they modify, hence talking about "loads of people", a plural subject, requires that the verb "to be"* be conjugated to "are" because of the plural number.

So, when you use the existential phrase "there [to be]" in the case of "loads of people", you would say "there are." Since we English speakers love contractions, the grammatically correct word is "there're," not "there's".

For those reasons, I can't accept it when people say "there's" with a plural subject, even in colloquial speech. It doesn't seem lazy to me, actually. To me, and I mean no offense to anybody, it seems ignorant and apathetic.

*This is for those who are starting out learning English:

"To be" is roughly equivelant (sp?) to "desu" (or "estar/ser" if you've studied Spanish at all). But, "there [to be]" is more equivelant to the "aru/iru" verbs. To me, saying "there's" for a plural subject would be like a gaijin using "irimasu" for something inanimate (like a coin or a bowl).

"There's trees" approximates to "Neko ga arimasu" in grammatical correctness.