John or john's

[tufguy]

Hi guys,

Please check these sentences,

1) He is A friend of john/ john's(are both acceptable I read it on internet).

2) This picture is me.

3) I am a friend of john or a friend of john's(what is the difference in the meaning).

Please tell me the details.

 

[Rover_KE]

Please capitalise the name 'John' every time you use it and correctly capitalise and punctuate the text in parentheses.

 

[Roman55]

I am not a teacher.

You asked a very similar question in this thread the other day. Did you bother going back to it to read the answers you got?

 

[tufguy]

No, I read on internet that "Friend of John" means John consider that person as his friend and "Friend of John's" means that person consider John as his friend.

 

[MikeNewYork]

There is no difference. If this person and John are friends, they are both friends of each other.

 

[tufguy]

so is "A friend of john" a correct statement, I think it is incorrect.

 

[MikeNewYork]

It is correct, as has been pointed out to you before, but your sentence isn't.

The first letter is not capitalized.
The name John is not capitalized.
"A friend of John" is a phrase.
This is another run-on sentence. Replace the comma after "statement" with a question mark.

Do you bother to read our answers?

 

[tufguy]

So please tell me what is difference between "A friend of john and john's"?

 

[Roman55]

I am not a teacher.

The most natural way to say this is, "He is a friend of John's". "He is a friend of John" is not incorrect. It is, in my view, less commonly heard but it has the same meaning.

Imagine that instead of John, the object of this friendship were a museum.

You could say you were a friend of the museum (because you are one of its benefactors) but you wouldn't say that you were a friend of the museum's because this sort of 'friendship' is not reciprocal.

 

[tufguy]

OK if the object is non living than we can't use 's, but if the object is a person we can use either?