Which rule is correct in written English????

Question

My teacher asked me to turn a paragraph into the posessive noun wherever possible, but i read in a text that for animals is not good to say for example:" my dog's legs are long" it said that it's much better to say " the legs of my dog are long". So what should I do? this is the sentence i have to work on: "At first some neighbours were frightened by the size of the dog". Shall I leave it like this? or write the posessive form? thanks

or " At first .....by the dog's size?" - jortosar, Sep 23, 2010

Answer 1

People actually say and write "my dog's legs are long" and almost never the ohter option.

Answer 2

Revised post: Good Question

It is more common to write it the way your teacher advised you and you should follow your teacher's advice.

After all, you would say:'The cow's milk tastes good' if you are talking about a particular cow

Not, 'The milk of the cow tastes good.' (Which is a statement about milk from cows in general, especially when used as a comparative statement with other animals : The milk of the cow taste's good compared to that of the goat ! )

However, you need to be aware that the Spanish language does not use the possessive apostrophe in the same way as the English language as you can see below:

It is my brother's book = Es el libro de mi hermano

You will need to remember this point when you translate between the two languages

I hope this helps

Hi, feliz, you got carried away with apostrophes so I cleaned them up a little ;) - revmaf, Sep 23, 2010

Thx Revmaf I sometimes use these ' as speechmarks ' rather than apostrophes but thx anyway LOl :) - FELIZ77, Sep 23, 2010

Answer 3

I have never heard of the rule that you read. It might technically be true, but as a native English speaker I say "My dog's legs..." all the time, and never "The legs of my dog...". The second one sounds awkward and not fluent at all.

"At first some neighbours were frightened by the size of the dog". This could also be said using the possessive, though this particular phrase is not as awkward as the "Legs of the my dog" one.

Answer 4

I have to agree with Kevin on all his assertions but to expand upon the phrase "frightened by the size of the dog" This is better, more fluent and expresses more succinctly your information than "frightened by the dog's size." Because it is the size and not the teeth, colour, smell or any other attribute that frightens the neighbours the attribute is put first and is considered by English language pundits as better grammar. Sounds very pedantic I know, but it works both in spoken and written English.

Answer 5

no, you should do as your teacher asked you to.

Anyway, they are not the dog´s neighbours