PARENTS

Good morning everyone.

Today's word is: parent

It means: a person's father or mother.

This word is usually found in the plural form (to refer to both parents).

Example 1:
My parents are not home, so we can have the party at my house.

In Example 1 we could also use my "mother and father" in place of parents.

Example 2:
My mother and father are not home, so we can have the party at my house.

One of the most common errors I hear amongst Spanish- or Catalan-speaking English students is translating the word padres (pares) directly into English as fathers. Doing this creates strange sentences like the one in the following example:

Example 3:
He's thirty years old and he still lives with his fathers.

Example 3 should be "...he still lives with his parents."

Tomorrow we will look at the confusion between parientes (in Spanish) and parents (in English).

Please post any questions about today's Daily Vitamin in the Daily Vitamin Plus! forum section on our website.

Enjoy your day.