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ESL forum >
Grammar and Linguistics > cultural or grammatical?
cultural or grammatical?
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claudio_santos
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cultural or grammatical?
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hi everybody, i teach english in brazil and we have a day to celebrate all mothers. we name this celebration with the word mother in the plural form, in my school we prepared some posts and i wrote "happy mothers � day", a friend said that the correct form it is "happy mother �s day", i explained i had written that way considering the rules for genitive in plural form, but he told me that it is a cultural issue, in english it is written in singular form. as i never lived abroad i am in doubt about it. i would like to have a clear explanation about this. i also want to thank everybody for sharing ideas with me through this website. |
6 May 2009
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aegw01
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Well, your friend is right, it is Happy Mother �s Day. However, being a typical native speaker, I have absolutely NO idea why that is. I could only guess that we only have ONE mother each, and we only think of OUR mother on that day??? Yeah, dumb answer, but I would say it �s cultural.
Sorry for the lack of explanation.
Angie |
6 May 2009
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cookingongas
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Wow, thanks Kristian. You �ve just saved me from making a fool of myself. I �m English, and like to think I �m well educated, but I was just about to say that it should be "mothers � day" (being a day for all mothers), until I read the Wikipedia article.
Angie - I was about to suggest you were wrong, so now I �m about to apologise.
I still think all mothers deserve recognition, not just our own.
All the best,
Charles. |
6 May 2009
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Spagman63
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I �ve been around a while and it has always been Mother �s Day. It �s the day for "Mother".
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6 May 2009
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claudio_santos
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i really want to thank the ones who answered my question concerning the correct way to write "happy mother �s day". it was really helpful, and now i have an explanation about the reason it is written this way if a student or someone else asks me about. thanks a lot for all you. |
8 May 2009
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