Which one of the following is correct?
1.The black and the white cat are my cats.
2.The black and the white cats are my cats.
I mean I have one black cat and one white cat.
Could you explain it to me? Thank you very much!
Learn English – The black and the white cat or cats
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Related Solutions
In the first sentence, the following is used as a noun.
EDIT: However, the most accepted use of below is as an adverb. (Up until today, I thought that it could function as an adjective, please see the comments below).
So in order for the second sentence to be grammatically correct, you would need to say,
Which of the sentences below is correct?
With the grammatical change, there is no difference in meaning, and either sentence could be used.
From the Wikipedia page on "mass nouns"...
- the word "fruit" is (usually) non-count, whereas "vegetables" is a plural count form.
What this means is that for many (particularly, older and/or British) speakers, explicitly pluralising the word in contexts such as "I'm a strict vegetarian - I only eat fruits and vegetables" sounds a bit "odd".
But over recent decades, particularly in America, the "regular" plural has become much more common...
I don't think there's really any difference between fruit and fruits when combined with ...and vegetables as part of the "collective" expression. Being an older Brit myself, I must admit fruits makes me think more of individual pieces of fruit, but that's just because I don't hear the collocation so often as Americans.
It's also interesting to note another point made in that Wikipedia link. In BrE (but not so much in AmE), the informal/slang term veg has been widely adopted as the "non-count" version of vegetables. And whereas fruits and vegetables sounds "a bit odd" to me, fruits and veg (which sometimes turns up in AmE usage) sounds positively weird.
Best Answer
There is one black cat, and there is one white cat, and they are my cats. (This is the one you want for your intended meaning.)
There is at least one black cat and at least one white cat; those are my cats. (There may be only one of each, but there are probably more.)
Basically, when you refer to individuals within a group, you use the singular noun form to refer to each individual, even if you then speak about the set of individuals as a group. Nobody wonders how to pluralize "John" and "Mary" in the phrase "John and Mary are going to the store" even though the plural verb form "are" is used; so, if you can substitute a name (like "Tinker") for a descriptive noun phrase (like "the black cat"), then you need to use the singular noun form, even if the noun in question is part of a group ("the black cat and the white cat").