Random pedantry question

[yrieithydd]

A couple of times today I have started to type `I'm going to a friend's wedding' but then have tied myself up in knots because I know both the bride and the groom, but typing a friends' wedding seems perverse but omitting the indefinite article seems strange, some friends' wedding perhaps? It's simpler in Welsh, it would be priodas ffrindiau rather than priodas ffrind.

Comments

[emperor]

Sorry to be so awkward!

[yrieithydd.livejournal.com]

[grins]

[caliston.livejournal.com]

"The wedding of some friends" would make sense, so I suppose "some friends' wedding" would follow. Still feels odd though.

[angelofthenorth.livejournal.com]

however 'some friends' sounds like 'oh, just some people I know'.

two friends' wedding - which aurally would make sense...

[mr-ricarno.livejournal.com]

Disambiguate thusly:

I'm going to the wedding of my friends.

Possibly a bit formal but it does solve your apostrophe problem.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

If you insert another word it'd be about as short to type "Sally and Matthew's wedding," which would imply you know them both, I think.

[claroscuro.livejournal.com]

Me, I'd say: I'm going to the wedding of two of my friends. Because of this, I'd never find myself worrying about the 's , a's and s's!

[curig.livejournal.com]

The "a" surely has to attach to the "friend" rather than to the "wedding", so "a friends' wedding" is simply wrong (which is probably why it sounds wrong!). As for what to write, there are many sensible suggestions here, which I cannot better. I think it's just an unusual situation because a plurality of things doesn't usually possess a singular thing.

[angelofthenorth.livejournal.com]

a convent kitchen?

[yrieithydd.livejournal.com]

My brain was trying to make the article go with wedding rather than friend, so treating the genitive as an adjective. Does German do things like that?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I don't know, but my brain did :)

[jy100.livejournal.com]

The wedding is definite; the friends (grammatically at least!) are not – "the wedding of some friends". Similarly "the (definite) kitchen of an (indefinite) convent". This way round is difficult in the Celtic languages, because a definite noun cannot possess an indefinite one, but makes the thing possessed definite too: in Gaelic ceann na coille = "the end of the wood" and I suppose pen y coed in Welsh is analagous. I suppose you could make up a compound noun ceann-choille ("a wood-end") etc.

German should be much more straightforward because it works like Lego, sticking words together happily to express more complex ideas; so you could probably get away with eine Freundenhochzeit – though it might be necessary to explain this as die Hochzeit von zwei Freunden.

A more serious logistic problem may be deciding which side of the aisle to sit on such an occasion!