'Girls' or 'girls" or 'girl's'; these three words sound exactly the same. So what's the difference? And which one is correct?
The answer is that it depends on what you're trying to say.
Whether to use 'girls' or 'girls" or 'girl's' is much more straightforward than you might think.
Let me lay it out for you:
Singular noun → girl
Plural noun → girls
Singular possessive → girl's
Plural possessive → girls’
'Girls' is the easiest one. It's the plural noun form of 'girl.' So if you want to talk about more than one girl, i.e., two or more, use 'girls.'
Simple enough, right?
For example:
There were three girls feeding the sheep.
Now let's talk possessives. As a reminder, a possessive noun shows ownership. The simple rule is to add an apostrophe and the letter -s to turn a simple noun into a possessive one.
For example:
Have you seen the girl's watch?
'Girls" is the possessive form of the plural noun' girls.' Say there are several girls, and you want to talk about something of theirs, then you would use 'girls".
The girls' paintings were full of bright colors.
The word 'girl' rhymes with 'curl,' 'twirl,' and 'pearl.' Phonetically, it sounds like this:
[ gurl ]
The International Phonetics Alphabet spells it like this:
/ gɜrl /
And if you want to pronounce the plural form of the word or either one of the possessive forms, all you need to do is add the -z sound at the end. Like such:
[ gurlz ]
Now we'll look at some examples of these three words in a sentence, so you can see how they are used in context.
Girls were required to marry young back then.
I asked the girls to choose their own outfits.
Can you hear the sound of girls laughing outside?
The girls' high school is an excellent one.
I can hear the girls' voices, but I don't know where they are.
The girls' enthusiasm was palpable.
As she walked past me, I wondered about the girl's destination.
Have you seen this girl's mum?
The girl's excitement was visible on her face.
And that concludes this article on the difference between 'girls' or 'girls" or 'girl's.' I hope you feel more confident now using each of these words.
Let's summarize what we've learned:
If you'd like to keep on improving your English, head to our blog now to learn about more confusing words like these.
