[Grammar] I like Friday / Fridays best

[Delphine]

Dear Teacher,
Which day of Joe's timetable do you like best?
1. I like Friday best.
2. I like Fridays best.
Thanks!
Delphine

 

[probus]

Both are okay. In my opinion, 2 is slightly the more natural, but this might be a matter of dialect.

 

[MikeNewYork]

I would choose 1.

 

[Delphine]

What is the difference between the two sentences?
Which one belongs to American English and which one belongs to Britist English?
Thanks!

 

[MikeNewYork]

There is not an substantive difference. It is a matter of personal preference. I am Amercan; Probus is Canadian.

 

[Raymott]

Dear Teacher,
Which day of Joe's timetable do you like best?
1. I like Friday best.
2. I like Fridays best.

There are factors that affect the answer. If you've just seen Joe's timetable, you'd almost have to say 1. If the timetable is the same every week, even after a few months, I'd still say 1; and if you say 2, you are referring to the days, not to Joe's timetable, in my opinion. If the Fridays differ, 2. is possible, since there are multiple "Fridays" on Joe's timetable.

 

[Delphine]

There are factors that affect the answer. If you've just seen Joe's timetable, you'd almost have to say 1. If the timetable is the same every week, even after a few months, I'd still say 1; and if you say 2, you are referring to the days, not to Joe's timetable, in my opinion. If the Fridays differ, 2. is possible, since there are multiple "Fridays" on Joe's timetable.

Thanks for your explanation. Joe's timetable is a normal school timetable. It is the same every week.
I also choose 1 as my best answer, but my colleagues insists on choosing 2. They argue that "I like apples." - apples which is also a plural noun.

Are there any rules or terms that referring to our choice 1?
Thanks!

 

[MikeNewYork]

There are no rules governing this, and either would be acceptable. However, if the schedule were the same every week, then I would still go with Friday. Days on a calendar are not apples.

 

[Raymott]

Are there any rules or terms that referring to our choice 1?

Yes, I thought I covered that. We are talking about Joe's timetable. There is, as you say, only one Friday on Joe's table. If a person says he likes the Fridays best, he is talking about days which, admittedly, are structured by Joe's timetable, but which do not occur on Joe's timetable. 2. is only correct if there are multiple Fridays on the timetable - which you deny.
If I placed a basket in front of you containing an apple, an orange, a banana, and a mango, and asked "Which piece of fruit in this basket would you prefer?", I would expect you to say, "The apple", not "I like apples the best". The latter answer might be correct, but it's not an answer to the question.
2. The question asks about "which day" (singular). This is a lesser argument, but it does illustrate that the questioner understands the concept, and does not ask "Which days on this timetable do you prefer?" If that were the question, the expected answer might be "Monday and Friday", but not "Fridays".

 

[Raymott]

It was in 5jj's post correcting your typo.

Ah, I misread your post, since without quoting or your saying whose post you were replying to, I assumed you were claiming that "Yh" occurred in mine - a regrettable side-effect of under-quoting which I had foreseen!

 

[MikeNewYork]

I have already filed a small protest about the new quoting rule. I should have used it there. Just trying to figure out how to comply.

 

[5jj]

As I have mentioned before, there is no 'rule'. Quoting is sometimes desirable, or even essential. The point I was trying to make a few days ago was that wholesale quoting is sometimes unnecessary, and can make a thread unwieldy. We have had instances where a member has quoted a whole paragraph followed by a question simply to say "The answer is yes". In such a situation, the quoting of the question may be helpful. The quoting of the whole passage about which the question was asked is usually not.

In the initial efforts to tidy up threads, a couple of quotation-deletions were a little over-zealous, but that does not mean that massive quotation is desirable.

There are always grey areas in moderation. For example, in this thread, I deleted four posts which, being about a a typo that had been corrected, were irrelevant to the thread as a whole. By the time I had done this, Raymott had submitted post #10. I was then faced with the question of deleting it, because it referred to posts now deleted, or leaving it because it made a point about the deletion of quotations, which clearly makes some people unhappy.

As I, personally, have no wish to act as a censor except when posts contain clearly offensive material, I left it - but the result is that this thread has now become somewhat side-tracked.

May I suggest that we now leave this thread to any further discussion of the original question? If you wish to express your feelings on the subject of quotation, perhaps it would be a good idea to start a thread in the General Members Discussion Forum.

 

[Rover_KE]

I'd like to make one more point: not everybody seems to appreciate that a quoted post can be edited, so it would be good if useless stuff like the following could be deleted so we didn't have to read it all again.

hi,sir im ali tosis From norht koRea..........i learn english Good....i Hop you are fine!!!

thnaks in Advanced:)