There most certainly will be a problem if your Nicole finds out that the reason you didn’t go with her to visit her parents is because you were out partying with that slutty other Nicole.
Anyway… I use “my mom” and “my dad” all the time. I admit to being inconsistent with the capitalization, though.
For those that see “Mom” or “Dad” as always being proper nouns, how do you handle it when referring to someone else’s parents?
Is it “What is your Dad making for dinner?” or “Is that your mom’s new car?”
And how do you handle the plural? “Our dads grew up together.”
Of course his Grammar is different from yours, unless you’re cousins or something.
My God!
I would guess they use “father” and “mother” in those instances.
I would not capitalize any of them. I’m certainly no English expert, but the heuristic I always follow is this: If you can replace the word with a general noun (like goldfish) then don’t capitalize, if it only sounds right replaced with another proper noun (like George) then capitalize it.
Our dads is no different from my dad, grammatically. It’s a possesive pronoun followed by a noun.
Agree it’s not really a grammar question, but more a simple word choice (either of which is valid). I grew up calling my male parental unit “Father” in our somewhat formal home, but now sometimes refer to him as “my dad” when talking to others, just because that’s a more common formulation IME. Otherwise I think it can sound a little pompous.
Oh, I totally misunderstood the question. Never mind my response above.
Sundog and the OP are right, guys, this is a grammar question.
In the OP’s dialect, as he describes it, “dad” and “father” fulfill two different grammatical roles. One is a name, the other is not.*
The correct answer to the OP is this. In the standard dialect, and the one probably shared by the vast majority of English speakers (or at least American English speakers), those two words don’t have different grammatical roles. Both can be used both as a noun and as a name.
*I actually don’t know for sure what the details are about the distinction between names and other kinds of nouns, but I’m sure there is such a distinction. Names don’t typically take articles for example.
But this is not a grammar question, because the answer to the question is not in terms of grammar, but in terms of the word “dad” having different meanings in two different varieties of English.
If “name” is a grammatical category, then it’s a grammar question. The OP is explaining that the word “dad” in his dialect is used only to fulfill the grammatical role “name,” and he sees it being used by others to fulfill a different grammatical role. He is asking whether, in standard English, the word “dad” can typically be used in the “name” role.
If by “name” you mean proper noun, then perhaps he should use “My Dad” when talking about the man.
Bolding mine.
You’ve just articulated exactly why this is not a grammar question.
The grammar only seems odd because he’s using ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ purely as proper nouns.
If, as other people do (I’d wager most other people), you define them as common nouns (which can be used as forms of address), then there’s no grammatical problem.
Thus, the difference is the definitions of the words, not the grammar.
The grammar only seems odd because he’s assigning grammatical roles in a grammatically non-standard way, but it’s not a grammar question?
The guy’s asking about grammar. I don’t see the value in insisting first that he not call it a grammar question before actually asking the question. It’s a question about grammar. It’s a grammar question.
Frylock, thanks very much for being the voice of reason.
To summarize:
For most people, the choice between “dad” and “father” has nothing to do with grammar. It’s purely a matter of word choice.
For the OP in the dialect he grew up with, the choice between “dad” and “father” is one of grammar: the latter is used only as a proper name and not as a common noun.
@Tengu: The distinction between proper and common nouns is a grammatical distinction, in the sense of grammar that I think most professional linguists would subscribe to.
OK, let’s go over this carefully.
What is the question being asked? It’s not completely clear, which is why everybody seems to supply a different interpretation.
The question I was answering was: can “my father” as opposed to “my dad” be considered more grammatically correct?
This is not a grammar question. it is a usage question. The answer to it is “no,” that either can be used alternately.
(I have to insert parenthetically that it is not possible in normal American speech never to refer to people you call Mom and Dad as “my mom” and “my dad” but by different terms entirely. I’m positive that the OP is selectively remembering and filtering word choice. Even so, I’m pretending that the question is real.)
Other people are creating a different question. I have to admit that when I try to express it, I reach only tortured versions of what that question could be, so excuse me if I don’t get it right.
There’s: If indeed Mom and Dad are treated as real names, then is “my dad” grammatically correct? That answer is yes, just as “my Nicole” is grammatically correct. However, it is usage that no native speaking American would normally use. (And see below.) Or, there is: Are the uses of Dad as a proper name and “my dad” as a reference grammatically correct? Again, the answer is yes. Another question apparently asked: Are the uses of Dad as a proper name and “my dad” as a reference grammatically identical? That answer is no. However, I personally don’t understand how you read the OP in that fashion.
If you try to treat the matter as dialect, nothing gets better. There are no American dialects which treat Mom and Dad as grammatical proper nouns different in any aspect from Father and Mother. Grammatically they are identical in all American speech. Even if you create a hypothetical dialect, the difference is one of usage rather than grammar, because it’s equivalent to the first question in my last paragraph.
If you had weird parents who named their children Dad Smith and Mom Jones and they got married because of curséd fate, then: well, then nothing. You could call Dad and Mom as dad and mom just as any other children did with their conventionally-named parents. It’s still usage.
If I haven’t asked the exact question you’re answering, my apologies, and please state it with as much precision as possible and I’ll try to address it.
“Name” is not a grammatical category separate from “noun.” “My (noun)” is always grammatically correct. But that doesn’t answer the OP’s question. Thus, the question is not about grammar.
“When I was a kid, I thought my name was Jesus Christ. And my brother thought his name was dammit.”
Thank-you, Bill Cosby.
I think it is a grammatical category, since names behave differently w.r.t. articles than do other nouns. Namely, a name can occur without an article, in places where if you put a noun in the same place instead, you’d need an article.
John can run.
A dog can run.
*Dog can run.
Since that’s got to do with how phrases can be composed, rather than with the meanings of the terms, it looks like a grammatical distinction to me.
Meh, I’ll have to rethink it actually.
John is resplendant.
Resplendance is resplendant.
No article needed in either case… so it’s not true that “if you put another kind of noun there, you’d need an article.”
But still: It does seem like names are in contrast with some other nouns with respect to what grammatical categories may be represented in words occuring just prior to them in a phrase. (See the contrast between John and Dog I gave above.) Doesn’t this in itself mark out names as marking out a grammatical role?
Your starred sentence is grammatically correct. Grammar is not the only set of rules that applies to usage.