Hi everyone! Today is a quick English grammar blog for you. I decided to put this together this mini lesson after receiving a few questions from my students who were a little confused on this topic. Are you ready? Let’s get started:
NOUN (singular or plural) + OF + possessive pronoun
Jamie is a friend of mine.
Clarissa is a classmate of his.
A friend of mine will be visiting me over the holidays.
They are students of ours.
So, what’s the difference?
Jamie is a friend of mine.
Jamie is my friend.
Clarissa is a classmate of his.
Clarissa is his classmate.
A friend of mine will be visiting me over the holidays.
My friend will be visiting me over the holidays.
Many times these can mean the same thing, but…
the “of” structure is more general. You are mentioning the person because he/she is ONE out of a group.
Jamie is a friend of mine. = I have many friends, but Jamie is a (one) friend of mine.
Clarissa is a classmate of his. He has many classmates, but Clarrissa is a (one) classmate of his.
You can really feel the difference in the next example:
Pete is a husband of mine.
Pete is my husband.
These are both grammatically correct. However, only sentence 2 makes sense because I have 1 husband. The first sentence sounds odd because it seems like I have more than 1 husband.
Thank you so much for reading this blog today. I hope you found this mini lesson helpful. If you have friends, colleagues, or family members who you think would find this useful, don’t forget to share it with them! You can also find more helpful blog posts here.
Arnel 🙂
