RELATIVES

Good morning everyone.

Today's word is: relative (noun)

Meaning: a person who is in the same family as someone else. 

Example 1:
Her nuclear family is quite small, but she has a lot of relatives that live in southern Spain.

Another common error that I hear amongst Spanish- or Catalan-speaking English students is translating the word parientes directly into English as parents. Doing this creates problematic sentences like the one in the following example:

Example 2:
She was born in London, but she has lots of parents in Barcelona, and she speaks Spanish and Catalan.  

Example 2 should be "...she lots of relatives in Barcelona..." Normally we only have one or two parents (a father and a mother), so it sounds strange to say that you have "lots of parents."

Tomorrow is Friday the 13th and will be the last Daily Vitamin before the summer. Tomorrow I will send you some ideas for keeping your English alive during the holidays.

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

Have a great day!