Dear Mr. Yang,

My question concerns the following two expressions:

1) He is my friend.
2) He is a friend of mine.

Is it true that (1) means that I have only one friend (he) and (2) means that I have many friends and "he" is one of them? Or is expression (2) slowly falling out of use nowadays?

Thank you.

Yours sincerely,
Kevin

Dear Kevin,

Both are ok.
1)-simply means he is your friend-the sentence does not imply that you have only one friend.
2)-simply means you have a few or many friends and he is one of them.
The sentence is not falling out of use at all.

YTL

Dear Mr.Yeung,

1.之前我看了一套電影, 有個人說"i have never seen it before"
另一個問他"never??" 他答"No."為什麼他會答no, 而不是yes???
2.我提議在節目中播的歌名和歌詞post 出來, 讓人可以聽歌學英文

Holly

Dear Holly,
The answer is correct.It means,"No.I've never seen it before."
If he says "Yes."he means,"Yes,I have seen it before."

i do not suggest you learn English from listening to popular songs.

YTL

Dear Mr.Yang

I would like to ask you something about tense and sentence correctness.These problems confuse me a long time ago.

What is perfect tense?
When will we use this tense? and
What is the difference between present tense and perfect tense?

“Good to see you again!”
Is this sentence correct?

Thank you very much

Wisdom Wong

Dear Wisdom ,

Perfect tense shows that an action or event has (or had) just been completed (or finished )
Present tense is 'now' . Present perfect is ' just before now' .
' Good to see you again ' is correct .

YTL

Dear Hi Mr. Yang,

Today I listen to RTHK 2 and heard you talk about the usage of the word 'few'. You have listed 5 example to illustrate that:

1. There are a few visitors.
2. There are few visitors.
3. There are very few visitors.
4. There are quite a few visitors.
5. There are only a few visitors.

I remember my English teacher teach this word when I was in From 2. I still remember this because he has pointed out a very significant
difference: "a few" means there is still some, but 'few' actually means
no at all. That is, the second example above will actually mean 'There is no visitor.' So if I use a mathematics equation, I can rank the number of visitors of the above in the following order: 4>1 or 5>3>2,

Do you agree?

Regards,
Frankle Kwan

Dear Frankle,

Few= almost none
a few = several
very few = small number of
quite a few = quite a lot

YTL