Thursday, February 15, 2007

"My friend" vs. "a friend of mine"

I can't understand a difference between "my friend" and "a friend of mine" for a long time.
One textbook describes the difference as follows.

a friend of mine ==> refer to one of friends vaguely
my friend ==> refer to a specific friend

What? I can't understand.

I always use "my friend", I guess because it's simple and easy. But most native speakers (Americans) say "a friend of mine."
Should I use "a friend of mine"?

2 comments:

PA said...

I think the difference is more that "my friend" seems to imply you only have 1 friend. Whereas "a friend of mine" implies you have more than one friend!
:-)

sand said...

Oh! So I should use "a friend of mine" from now.
Thank you, PA!