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  • Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Lesson 306. The title of today's lesson

  • is family is a collective noun. Okay. Let's take a look at the note here.

  • Don't say the word families when talking about all your own family members.

  • Everyone in one's family is part of the same family. So that's what we mean by

  • collective noun. Everybody's included just in the one group, in the one noun. The word

  • family can be plural if it refers to different families. So sometimes when

  • students make the mistake, I try to clarify it. Like your family and my

  • family are two different families. But you know, if you're talking about like

  • your uncle's your aunts, your cousins, your grandparents, that's all part of the

  • same family. So in that sense family is singular. It's one family. Yeah. So let's

  • look at , let's look at some examples here where students might make a mistake.

  • You know, the first one with the X of course this is wrong. If somebody said my

  • families are going to visit for Chinese New Year. No. You don't say. Your families

  • are going to visit. So here's a couple of ways you could say it. My relatives are

  • going to visit for Chinese New Year. Of course you could say that, or the second

  • one you could just simply say my family is going to visit for Chinese New Year.

  • Because it already implies all the relatives whether they are immediate

  • members of your family like your brothers or sisters or parents or know

  • if you're married maybe your wife and children or extended family. You know,

  • like uncles, aunts, cousins and so on. All right. So let's continue. Let's look at

  • the second part here. If you say you have more than one family, it implies you are

  • married more than once and had children with different women or husbands. Yes. You

  • got to be careful. You say all my families. How many families do you have ? How many

  • times did you marry ? You know, you got one family living in you know, one

  • country another family in another country or another city

  • somewhere. So that's what it kind of suggests . So you got to be careful if you say

  • your families. It actually suggests that you married several times and had

  • different children with different you know, different spouses. Okay. Let's

  • continue. Again with the X. This is wrong. So if you say his families are having a

  • reunion again. No with check, this is right. His family members are having a

  • reunion. Yes. Of course, you could always say family members to make to make it

  • clear that you're talking about the individual people in the family. His

  • relatives are having a reunion. Of course, that's implied family and there's two

  • example where we actually do use the word families in the plural. Two

  • different families competed against each other on the game show " Family Feud " Yeah.

  • that's a really old game show, but that's what they used to have. They used

  • to have one family on one side and the other family on the other side answering

  • questions to try to win money. So and they called it family feud, We do say

  • family feud that's a real term to when two families kind of fight each other

  • for a very over very long periods of time. When we say family feud. And number...

  • The second one here poor families cannot afford to live in that neighborhood. So

  • again, this is an example where you actually do use the word family in the

  • plural. When you talk about families in general or poor families in general. Okay.

  • Anyway I hope you got it. I hope hope it's clear Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.

Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Lesson 306. The title of today's lesson

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