Mine or me? Please help!

[Tran Mai Anh]

1)I was taught to use " of mine", "of his"," of hers"
Ex:The book of mine is very interesting.
But I often see the way of using "of me" instead of"mine".
EX: piece of me_the name of Britney's Hit.
Therefore i'm wondering if both ways are correct. Please help me!


2)I have one more question.
If we must use "of theirs" instead of " of them", why do we use " of my friends" instead of " of my friends' ".
I think : theirs=my freinds' and them=friends.

[MANH NGUYEN]

(1)
Re: me vs mine!

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Quote:
Originally Posted by asad hussain
Which one is correct to say and why?

I was right in the middle of teaching another student of mine.
OR
I was right in the middle of teaching another student of me.

It is quite common to use a possessive pronoun (such as "mine") in that construction. The objective pronoun "me" is not idiomatic in English.


(2)
Hai câu này khác nhau:
They are my friends.
They are my friends' (ex. friends' books)
(These are our books; those are my friends'.)
The sentence:
They are of my friends ===> S/BThey belong to my friends.
Tôi không nghĩ "To be of" có thể thay thế "to belong to"!!!:

[Kaji]

1) In the song title, she's talking about something that, while it does belong to her, is a part of her. The book, on the other hand, is external.

2) A couple of example sentences to give context:
a) "What do you think of my friends?"
b) "What do you think of my friend's clothes?"
c) "What do you think of my friends' clothes?"

In A, the friends are the object of the sentence, and thus no apostrophe is needed since they aren't the owners of anything being discussed.

In B and C, the object of the sentence changes from friends to clothes, and so the apostrophe is added. Sentence B is talking about just one friend, so it comes before the S. In sentence C we are talking about the clothes of many friends, and so we put the apostrophe at the end.

Hope it helps!

[Tran Mai Anh]

Thanks for your help Kaji and Manh Nguyen!

Maybe Kaji misunderstood my question 2.

1>The car of my friend is red.
2>The car of my friend's is red.

I'm wondering why we often use the sentence 1. instead of 2., because according to your explanation, we should use 2>, right?

[Kaji]

Gotcha, I was a bit unclear at first, so I tried creating some sample sentences where I'd use the phrase.

In this case, it's because there are two ways to express possession in English: "The A belonging to B" or "B's A", where A is the object and B is its owner. In your second example both are being used; the appropriate way to rephrase your first one would be as "My friend's car is red."

Both have their uses, in many ways it really depends on what you want to emphasize, the owner or the object. In the first method ("the A belonging to B"), the object comes first, and therefore draws more attention. The second method ("B's A") draws attention to the owner.

As for which is "more" correct, I'd say I personally use the owner-first wording about 90% of the time or more; it's more natural sounding. Saying something is "of" something else, unless it's a place or an organization (e.g. the Duke of York, who also happens to be York's Duke; the president of the company, who also happens to be the company's president), is relatively uncommon; hence why I switched it to "belonging to" in the examples I just mentioned. In either case, with the exception of titles (such as the aforementioned duke), the use of the object-first wording tends to come across as very formal. Good for writing papers, but somewhat stilted in conversation.

Hope that helps to clarify things a little for you!

[Tran Mai Anh]

Thank you very much!!

[unnamed]

Thanks for your help Kaji and Manh Nguyen!

Maybe Kaji misunderstood my question 2.

1>The car of my friend is red.
2>The car of my friend's is red.

I'm wondering why we often use the sentence 1. instead of 2., because according to your explanation, we should use 2>, right?

1>The car of my friend is red. => OK
2>The car of my friend's is red. => Wrong. You should have written: 2>My friend's car is red.

[Tran Mai Anh]

Thank you very much! I ased that question because I didn't understand the reason why we use:
1> The car of Ken's............but The book of my friend........( I think my friend's)
My friend and Ken's are not from the same word type.

To tell the true, I still don't understand thouroughly, but your helps are very helpful!

[MANH NGUYEN]

Thank you very much! I ased that question because I didn't understand the reason why we use:
1> The car of Ken's............but The book of my friend........( I think my friend's)
My friend and Ken's are not from the same word type.

To tell the true, I still don't understand thouroughly, but your helps are very helpful!

I think that you have been possessed or haunted by 'S!!!

The car of Ken
or
The book of my friend

Definitely no possessive case here! Except when you need to do so, and
you must have good reasoning....Of course, you must master the English Grammar, or your version/translation would be very sloppy!!!

[Tran Mai Anh]

Maybe you used strong language Manh Nguyen. The example The car of Ken's was taken from the book Round Up 5,p141 (www.longman.com). and I am not haunted!