My favourite animal is a cat/the cat/cats. (2025)

Which one is correct?

1.My favourite animal is a cat.
2.My favourite animal is the cat.
3.My favourite animal is cats.

Thank you!

Harry1234 said:

Which one is correct?

1. space here My favourite animal is a cat.
2. space here My favourite animal is the cat.
3. space here My favourite animal is cats.

Thank you!

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1 and 2 are both possible. In #1, you're referring to a specific cat. In #2, you're referring to the whole species. #3 is incorrect because "animal is" is singular but "cats" is plural. You could say "My favourite animals are cats", meaning that you have more than one favourite animal but each one belongs to the species "cat".

Harry1234 said:

Which one is correct?

1.My favourite animal is a cat.
2.My favourite animal is the cat.
3.My favourite animal is cats.

[........]

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What do you think a real life conversation would look like? (See below.)

Abe: What's your favorite pet?
Bob: I like cats.

Native speakers do not think in terms of what is correct or incorrect. To the extent that they do think of such things they ask themselves what is appropriate for the situation. In the brief conversation above, Bob's response is open-ended.

emsr2d2 said:

1 and 2 are both possible. In #1, you're referring to a specific cat. In #2, you're referring to the whole species. #3 is incorrect because "animal is" is singular but "cats" is plural. You could say "My favourite animals are cats", meaning that you have more than one favourite animal but each one belongs to the species "cat".

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Thank you! Instead of those sayings, can I say : My favorite animal is cat. Also, what if it is an uncountable noun? For example, 1. My favorite food is broccoli. Or 2. My favorite food is the broccoli.

Regarding (1) (My favorite animal is a cat), it seems to me to be talking about one particular cat. Compare:

A: Who is your favorite person?
B: My favorite person is a man.
A: Well, that does narrow things down! Which man?

For the generic meaning, I'd use either (2) (My favorite animal is the cat) or a sentence which has not been listed.

4. Cats are my favorite animal.

That very sentence was, I just discovered, endorsed as correct at this site in 2010 (link).

Harry1234 said:

can I say : My favorite animal is cat.

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No. You need to add 'the'.

Harry1234 said:

1. My favorite food is broccoli.

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Correct.

Harry1234 said:

2. My favorite food is the broccoli.

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That's incorrect.

Flask said:

4. Cats are my favorite animal.

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I say this is at best poor English. The noun 'animal' should be pluralised.

Cats are my favourite animals.

jutfrank said:

I say this is at best poor English. The noun 'animal' should be pluralised.

Cats are my favourite animals.

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I say that it's not poor English, and that 'animal' need not be pluralized. (But I'd drop your "u" in favourite.) Other examples:

Apples are my favorite fruit.
Porsches are my favorite car.
Candy canes are my favorite dessert.

Flask said:

Apples are my favorite fruit.
Porsches are my favorite car.
Candy canes are my favorite dessert.

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Would you reverse the noun phrases?

What's your favorite car?
My favorite car is Porsches.

I guess not. I wonder then how you might finish the sentence:

My favorite car is ...

jutfrank said:

No. You need to add 'the'.

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You said I need to add 'the' in the sentence 'My favourite animal is cat.'. So why did you say that 'My favourite food is the broccoli.' is incorrect. What's different between these two sentences' structures?

Tarheel said:

I'll take a stab at it. When we hear "cat" we don't think of it as representing the species. However, when we hear "broccoli" we think of that as representing the food in general.

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So can I understand like this, We need to add 'the' before animals when we talk about fvourite animals, like the cat, the dog, the rabbit...., but we can't add 'the' before food when we talk about favourite food like cake, carrot, cabbge, broccoli...?

jutfrank said:

Would you reverse the noun phrases?

What's your favorite car?
My favorite car is Porsches.

I guess not. I wonder then how you might finish the sentence:

My favorite car is ...

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It's true. I wouldn't reverse the positions of subject and subject complement there, but is that a valid objection? If a sentence is bad with a reversal of terms, does that imply that the sentence was bad prior to the reversal of terms?

The sentence Porsches are my favorite car may be paraphrased Porsches have, as a class, the property of being my favorite car. How would you paraphrase the sentence with your reversal of terms? "My favorite car" does not pick out a class.

Consider, too, sentences such as the following one, in which the plural noun head of the subject complement truly is needed:

Lilacs and hyacinths are my favorite flowers.

To answer your question, I'd finish your sentence My favorite car is . . . with the generic noun phrase the Porsche.

Flask said:

It's true. I wouldn't reverse the positions of subject and subject complement there, but is that a valid objection? If a sentence is bad with a reversal of terms, does that imply that the sentence was bad prior to the reversal of terms?

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To some extent I think so, yes.

Flask said:

The sentence Porsches are my favorite car may be paraphrased Porsches have, as a class, the property of being my favorite car. How would you paraphrase the sentence with your reversal of terms? "My favorite car" does not pick out a class.

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Out of context, I wouldn't interpret the 'car' question to be asking about a class.

My favorite car is the Porsche 911 GT3.

To ask more generally about favourite manufacturers, I'd prefer a different question, such as:

A: What's your favorite car make?
B: Porsche.

Harry1234 said:

You said I need to add 'the' in the sentence 'My favourite animal is cat.'. So why did you say that 'My favourite food is the broccoli.' is incorrect. What's different between these two sentences' structures?

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Unlike discrete things such as cats and cars, broccoli is uncountable, which means we understand it as 'stuff' rather than a 'thing', and as such it isn't pluralised:

I like broccolis.
I like broccoli.

Q: What's your favourite vegetable?
A: My favourite vegetable is broccoli.

The specifier 'the' is used only for discrete countable things, like cats and cars.

Note that when you say My favourite animal is the cat, the phrase 'the cat' does not refer to a specific individual animal, but rather to the whole species, which is a more general idea. You can make the same kind of reference when talking about concepts like inventions, for example:

Q: What's the best invention of the twentieth century?
A: The internal combustion engine.

Harry1234 said:

So can I understand like this, We need to add 'the' before animals when we talk about fvourite animals, like the cat, the dog, the rabbit...., but we can't add 'the' before food when we talk about favourite food like cake, carrot, cabbge, broccoli...?

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My apologies! If you ask me what my favorite animal is I am going to respond with "I like cats" or something like that.

I have with that response avoided using "the" altogether. Similarly, I might say I like cake or cookies or muffins or donuts or whatever.

Would "My favorite animal is the cat" be okay? Yes, because it's clear that we're talking about cats in general. However, we would say "My favorite dessert is cake".

I might say my favorite vegetable is carrots. Or peas. Or potatoes.

jutfrank said:

Out of context, I wouldn't interpret the 'car' question to be asking about a class.

My favorite car is the Porsche 911 GT3.

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Oh, I like your sentence much better than mine! You see, I'm not really a car person; but I now see that we need the specific model and make for such a noun phrase to make sense with generic meaning. The sentence My favorite car is the Porsche would likely only be used without generic meaning. The speaker may mean "my favorite of these three cars."

Regarding the grammatical-concord issue, I do want to say that I find it interesting and am not perfectly at ease with sentences like Cats are my favorite animal, though I strongly resist the idea that they are "at best poor English" and find it noteworthy that that sentence was not rejected by 5jj in the fifteen-year-old thread to which I gave a link in Post #5.

TheParser even thought My favorite animal is cats was grammatically correct, but I sympathized with 5jj's rejection of that sentence. I just and found something in Quirk et al. (1985) that may be of interest. On page 767, in Section 10.46 ("Subject-complement and object-complement concord"), they give the following example:

[3] Their principal crop is potatoes.

They provide the following commentary on that example: "In [3] the subject complement is a generic noun phrase, which might equally be singular: Their principal crop is the potato." In a footnote at the bottom of page 767, they even recognize its "potentiality for subject-complement reversal," giving the following sentence as also grammatical:

[3'] Potatoes are their principal crop.

Would it not be fair to compare these sentences with the cases we have been considering? The cases seem somewhat parallel to me. "Their principal crop" picks out one of many crops, just as "my favorite animal" picks out one of many animals. Do you find yourself at odds with Quirk et al., too? Are their sentences [3] and [3'], to you, "at best poor English"?

Flask said:

I find it interesting and am not perfectly at ease with sentences like Cats are my favorite animal, though I strongly resist the idea that they are "at best poor English"

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Firstly, I will say that if you found my rather harsh judgement insulting, I apolgise, and on reflection I think I worded it too strongly. You are the last person I would consider to speak poor English!

Flask said:

Quirk et al. (1985) ... give the following example:

[3] Their principal crop is potatoes.

They provide the following commentary on that example: "In [3] the subject complement is a generic noun phrase, which might equally be singular: Their principal crop is the potato.

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I would say I prefer the latter, singular version; even more so the version without the definite article, which would allow the crop to be conceived as uncountable:

Their principal crop is potato.
Their principal crop is rice.

I think it makes a bit more sense to talk about farm produce as 'stuff'. In the same way, I'd prefer an uncountable answer to a question about food:

Q: What's your favourite food?
A: Potato

Flask said:

Would it not be fair to compare these sentences with the cases we have been considering? The cases seem somewhat parallel to me.

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Yes, I think that's fair as they are equivalent as far as I can see.

Flask said:

Do you find yourself at odds with Quirk et al., too? Are their sentences [3] and [3'], to you, "at best poor English"?

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I'm going to relax my answer and say that I don't find either one very good examples of precise, academic English. As far as everyday informal language goes, I don't object, and I think I might use them or an equivalent in my own casual speech.

jutfrank said:

Their principal crop is potato.

Q: What's your favourite food?
A: Potato

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Interesting! Despite also being a BrE speaker, I'd use "potatoes" in both sentences.