English Possessive 's VERSUS the "of" structure

Do I say "my brother's car" or "the car of my brother"??? If you have ever wondered when to use the apostrophe 's' or the 'of the' structure when using possessives this video will clear it up for you.

Video Transcript

Hi! Welcome back to English with Kathryn. Today we're going to be talking about possessives - my brother's car or the car of my brother.

Before we go into the differences between the apostrophe s and the use of "of" we are going to talk about apostrophe s and how it's used. In the case of a singular noun, apostrophe s is always correct - for example, my mother's car ....the cat's toy.

In the case of a plural noun we put the apostrophe after the "s" for example, my

parents house, and the boys room. Look at the differences now between the singular

and plural use of the S.

We have some very commonly used irregular plural nouns like

people

men

women

children

even though they're plural nouns we use it like a singular noun. We use the apostrophe s when a singular noun already ends in S. We can add the apostrophe s or just add an

apostrophe like you see in these examples.

Socrates' book.

Mrs. Lewis's house.

So now we know the rules of the apostrophe s, let's go back to the question my brother's car or the car of my brother? So in this sentence the correct answer

is my brother's car apostrophe s ...and why?

Because we were referring to the possession of a person. The rules state that when we are talking about people animals, physical characteristics or attributes, organizations or a group of living things we use the apostrophe s or just the apostrophe. I'll give you some examples:

This is my father's car.

We don't say this is the car of my father.

Ireland's climate is getting warmer and warmer.

Again we're talking about a country.

There is something wrong with that dog's leg.

We're talking about an animal.

NATO's purpose is to safeguard freedom.

We're talking about an organization.

The apostrophe s is also used to talk about time expressions like yesterday's weather, tomorrow's news.

Now let's take a look at "of" in possessive structures. When we are not using

the names of people, animals, countries, etc, we do not use the apostrophe s. We

are more likely to use the structure with "of. Let me give you some examples:

The name of the street - NOT the street's name.

The roof of the house, the back of the room - NOT the room's back.

We use the of structure when the possessing expression is very long.

For example "the wife of the man who drives the yellow car" - it would be really

difficult to say "the man who drives the yellow car's wife" it's just too long, so

in this case we use "of". Now, in some expressions we can use both the apostrophe s structure and the of structure. Now, it's difficult to explain the rules around this because it

sometimes depends on a certain expression but it generally means that

the noun that comes first is the most important noun in the sentence. For

example

the train's arrival

versus

the arrival of the train

In the first sentence the most important noun is the train - in the second sentence the most

important is the actual arrival. Let's take another example:

the world's oldest mountain

versus

the oldest mountain in the world

And as you can see in the world's oldest mountain we really have placed the importance on

the world, in the second sentence we really place the importance on the fact

that it's the oldest mountain.

Now that was a short tutorial on the use of the

apostrophe s and the structure of in possessives I'm going to give you a

quick quiz to see how you have absorbed all that knowledge

and I will talk to you again at the end of the video.

[watch video for quiz at 05:32]

How did you go? Did you get them all right? Good stuff! Also, if you like this video

please press like and subscribe and you'll get more videos following very soon thanks and see you soon.

Bye bye!