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Consider the following :

  1. A friend of him came here yesterday.

  2. A friend of his came here yesterday.

My question is which one is acceptable. If both are acceptable, do they have any difference in meaning.

Hope somebody knowledgable could help ...

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  • Now, we have ELL up and running for questions as these. ell.stackexchange.com
    – Kris
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 5:56
  • The construction is idiomatic English, the double genitive: a friend of Jim's or a friend of his. See also: eslcafe.com/grammar/nouns18.html
    – Kris
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 5:59

1 Answer 1

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Only "A friend of his came here yesterday" is acceptable. The other one is grammatically incorrect, and not even illiterate native Anglophones would use it.

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  • "Although in use since Chaucer’s time or before, the double genitive attracted the attention of 18th century grammarians; their disapproval did nothing to stamp it out." (dailywritingtips.com/a-friend-of-jims) What is "grammatically incorrect?"
    – Kris
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 6:06
  • @Kris: We don't use Chaucerian English these days. You may, but then you'd be an outlier & not worth listening to because then everything you said would be incomprehensible. I've oft contended here, hundreds of times, that native speakers will say anything & claim that it's correct simply because that's what they say (ergo, it must be right), or say that because dear Jane Austen once used the structure, it's perfectly normal contemporary English. I disavow such absurd twit-speak. Some speakers of what society calls substandard dialects may say it, but that doesn't make it "correct".
    – user21497
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 6:15
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    @Kris: The form "a friend of him" is ungrammatical. We do say things "You've been a good friend to me/to him/to her/to them" & "You've been a good friend of mine/of his/of hers/theirs", but not "He's a friend of me" or "He's been a good friend of me/of him/of her/of them". Did you not notice the spelling difference?
    – user21497
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 7:15
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    Why was this answer downvoted? I've never heard an English-speaker say "NOUN PHRASE... of him" in this way. It might be a stretch to call it grammatically incorrect (though his/hers are at least possessive pronouns and him/her are not), but "A friend of me/him/her" is certainly not idiomatic in any English-speaking area where I've been.
    – njd
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 9:15
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    @Kris It’s incorrect because it is something a native speaker would not and could not and should not generate. Just ask one.
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Apr 17, 2013 at 12:41

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