1

As far as I know:
(1) my friend's car - correct
(2) a car of my friend's - correct
(3) a car of my friend - incorrect

I'm curious about whether the correctness will remain the same if I add "one of":
(4) one of my friends' car - Is it still correct?
(5) a car of one of my friends' - Is it still correct?
(6) a car of one of my friends - Is it still incorrect?

(The question is about whether "one of" affects the genitive.)

an update:
I wrote "a car of my friend" is incorrect because:
forum.wordreference.com: the sentence "That's a car of John." is incorrect.
Therefore, I think, the sentence "That's a car of my friend." is incorrect too.
Therefore, I'm inferring, the phrase "a car of my friend" is an incorrect phrase.

Improve this question
7
  • Why use a possessive in 5)? A car of one of my friends. There is no possessive there. A car of my friend was entered in the race. Commented Jan 15, 2024 at 17:24
  • You are the OP. There is no end of the OP. Commented Jan 15, 2024 at 18:11
  • @Lambie You wrote the sentence "A car of my friend was entered in the race." is correct. I made an update at the end of the original post. There is the sentence "That's a car of my friend." which is incorrect. Why is the phrase "a car of my friend" in your sentence correct and in mine is not? Thanks. Commented Jan 15, 2024 at 18:16
  • 1
    There is nothing intrinsically wrong with: a car of my friend, which is why I provided the example in my first comment but the fact is we'd generally use: my friend's car in most cases. Commented Jan 15, 2024 at 18:17
  • 1 is correct. 2 is incorrect. 3 is correct but not idiomatic. Beyond that, "my friend's car" avoids trying to say you have a lot of friends. Commented Jan 15, 2024 at 20:26

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