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There's no countries

gracemlui

Australia

John Lennon  - The song "Imagine": There's no countries…..Should it be "There're no countries"?

06:37 AM Jan 18 2007 |

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worldmikel

worldmikel

United States

The contraction of "there's" means "there is". In the case of John Lennon's "Imagine" lyrics, the "there's" doesn't refer actually to "no countries". There are words missing that are implied. The implied words are left to your own imagination, which probably underscores the point to the song. The best guesses of the missing words would be perhaps, life, a world or a universe. So the actual sentence, without his "poetic license" applied to it might be: Imagine there's a world with no countries. Imagine there's a life with no Heaven. Imagine there's a universe with no possessions. 

These implied clauses occur often in spoken English and because of poetic license, occur in most songs. In order to make a song rhyme, words need to be omitted, yet proficient English students can easily spot the missing words and understand the concept. Imagination was the topic of Lennon's genius song and it happens to be what is required to understand it and give it deeper personal meaning.

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08:59 AM Jan 19 2007 |