Which one is correct?

Question

Would anyone please tell me which of the following two expressions is correct?  "a friend of my father" or "a friend of my father's"

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

You've already written your sentence with 'of'. Namely, you shouldn't add 's to father.

I mean:

If you wanna use that "father's", that will be correct in this sentence: My father's friend.
If you wanna use it that "a friend of my father" then you must drop 's. Namely the correct sentence will be that as I've just written that a friend of my father.

You can use in two types but there's a tiny difference as you see:)

Yankee · Answer

Saying "a friend of my father's" is like saying "a friend of his", so there is nothing unusual about that usage. That sort of structure is used quite often.

However, these have two expressions have different meanings, for example:

A picture of my father = a picture in which you can see an image of my father

A picture of my father's = a picture that belongs to my father

Anonymous · Answer

Thank you!

Anonymous · Answer

Thank you for your reply. I understand the difference between the two with "a picture", but I still don't quite understand the structure with "a friend". Is "a friend of my father's" correct? Does it have any difference with "a friend of my father"?  Does "a friend of my father's" mean "my father has many friends and this person is just one of them" while "a friend of my father" just means "the person is my father's friend" and "my father may have only this one or more friends"? Sorry if my questions puzzle you as my English is probably not good enough to express my ideas.

Which one is correct?

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