My best friend lived in Hong Kong where there are a lot of delicious foods in...

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z7655431

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My best friend lived in Hong Kong where there are a lot of delicious foods in Hong Kong. (from my teacher's handout)
Is this sentence correct? Can I delete the word "there" before "are"? Is the word "there" necessary? In addition, is "a lot of delicious foods" correct? How about just "a lot of delicious food"? If I use "a lot of delicious food", should I change "are" to "is"? Thanks!
 

Rover_KE

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What is the purpose of your teacher's handout?

Are you required to find mistakes in it?
 

z7655431

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What is the purpose of your teacher's handout?

Are you required to find mistakes in it?
As I said before, my grammar teacher is not a native speaker, so she would make mistakes very often. When I find something odd, I will ask here. And this sentence is about a relative clause (the where clause). So I personally find that "a lot of delicious foods" takes a plural form, and I want to check if it's correct or not. I find that maybe just "where are a lot of..." is OK, so I come here to ask it's OK or not. I am not required to find mistakes in it. My teacher doesn't know there are mistakes in it, which is very bad, but I want to learn the correct English. That's all the reasons I ask these questions.
 

bhaisahab

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My best friend lived in Hong Kong where there are a lot of delicious foods. This is correct. Do not repeat "in Hong Kong".
 

PaulMatthews

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My best friend lived in Hong Kong where there are a lot of delicious foods in Hong Kong. (from my teacher's handout)
Is this sentence correct? Can I delete the word "there" before "are"? Is the word "there" necessary? In addition, is "a lot of delicious foods" correct? How about just "a lot of delicious food"? If I use "a lot of delicious food", should I change "are" to "is"? Thanks!

Yes, essentially, apart from the unnecessary repetition of "Hong Kong" in the relative clause.

You can't delete "there" because it is the subject of the relative clause. You could say "... are a lot of delicious foods", but more natural might be "... is lots/plenty of delicious food". You don't need to repeat "Hong Kong" in the relative clause because the relativised word "where" is an adjunct of place meaning "in Hong Kong", so the relative clause effectively means 'there is lots/plenty of delicious food in Hong Kong'.
 
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