fruit is/are

cicerone imposter, you are mistaken about "some". This has already been established. Furthermore, not everybody uses "he" when unsure of the gender.

I'm not 100% sure he is, Contrex, mistaken about 'some', that is. I believe, strongly, that the singular verb is the default for 'fruit', so in that sense CI is mistaken.

Could it not be just the "funny" way we deal with 'fruit'? They are distinctive lumps of something, compare to vegetables or steaks, which we could easily view two different ways, as meat and as steaks.

I know what we use as a verb, but I'm puzzled as to why. Some others, was it one other?? ... said the same thing as Roberta and CI. I wonder if, in actual usage, some use the plural verb.

We use the verb which is most appropriate for the situation. If we are talking about part of the fruit in a bowl, a shop or a truck, in a generic sense, we would use "is". Some of the fruit in the bowl is rotten. Some of the fruit in the truck belongs to my brother. Some of the fruit in the shop is from Spain.

If, however, we wish to focus attention on the actual pieces of fruit, we might use "are" to talk about a plurality of them.

The hygiene inspector examined the oranges on sale and found that out of twenty-six fruit, four were mouldy.

[Edit] 1st sentence should read, I think, "Surely we use the verb which is most appropriate for the situation?"

Some of them are rotten.
*Some of them is rotten.

Some are rotten.
*Some is rotten.

Some pieces are rotten.
*Some pieces is rotten.

Some of the fruit are rotten. ??
Some of the fruit is rotten.

Just thinking out loud.