Learn English – Why is “Two friends of the parents’ have just left…” grammatically correct

apostrophedouble-possessivegrammaticalitypossessives

I just trying to solve this, but my English is not so good. Could anyone help me? Why is the letter a) correct?
thanks a lot in advance

Complete the following sentence: "Two ________ have just left for Argentina".

a) friends of my parents'
b) my parents' friends
c) friends of my parents
d) friends' my parents

Best Answer

It is questionable whether letter a) should be correct. I would argue that the answer is, in fact, c)

Two friends of my parents

The possessive apostrophe in parents' which answer a) contains, is redundant. We have the preposition "of" which tells us that the "owners" of these two friends are the speaker's parents, i.e. the parents of the speaker.