Grammar: Which of these is correct?

Question

a.) We need a greater understanding of each others' cultures.
b.) We need a greater understanding of each others cultures.
c.) We need a greater understanding of each other's cultures.

Answer 1

It's c because 'each other' never takes the plural 's'. You would never normally use 'each others', e.g. it's "They gave a present to each other", not "they gave a present to each others".

The 'culture' belongs to the 'each other', so you need an apostrophe 's' on the end of 'each other' i.e. each other's.
Whether or not 'culture' is plural has no bearing on how you treat 'each other'.

To support this, I found the following example in the Oxford Duden English-German Dictionary : 'they wore each other's hats'.

Answer 2

The answer is C. (Drawing on my English Literature degree and teaching qualifications-which are hopefully pointing me in the right direction here)

You would treat 'each other' in the same way that you would treat 'people' i.e.
"We need a greater understanding of other people's cultures."
Therefore if you replace 'people' with 'each other' it would be "We need a greater understanding of each other's cultures."

I agree though that : "One another's cultures" would be better.

Or rephrase it so there is no possessive in the sentence e.g.
"We need a greater shared understanding of world cultures" or something like that.

Answer 3

I don't think either of them are correct, because they imply that each of us could have more than one culture each. So, one of the following -

We need a greater understanding of each others culture. or, We need a greater understanding of one anothers culture.

Answer 4

There's definitely a possessive, so you do need an apostrophe.

If you're talking about two people saying 'the culture of each other' - each other's - it would be 'c'.

Agree that because other's is plural, 'a' is wrong. If it's two groups of people, you'd have to get rid of the 'each' - We need a greater understanding of other's culture, or better, of other cultures.

The fact that cultures is plural in your examples is irrelevant.

So 'c' is correct.

Answer 5

I am absolutely 100% sure that the answer is C. When the noun is a normal plural with an added s, no extra s is added in the possessive. BUT, "Each other" should arleady be considered plural. This is an atypical noun that doesn't require an "s" to become plural. In that case, to show possession, you add an apostrophe AND another "s."

For example, to prove that "each other" is already plural, you wouldn't say "They all like each others" if you are talking about a group of, say, 4 people... you would say "They all like each other." I promise, it's C.
---and surely, it's DEFINITELY NOT B!

I see people saying that "other" is singular, but I stress, again, that this is an exceptional noun, and should be thought of as "each other" (plural) not separately as "each" and "other." (singulars)

Answer 6

I think B because of the possession rule. Not 100% certain so if this is for a graded paper or an important impression don't go with my answer. There is a website that you can enter more details in and it will grammar check- try googling for that. I used it when I had to type a summary for work- just don't have it book marked. MS Word didn't detect any of the above options as being incorrect, so you need a site like that or for a teacher or English major to wake up. ;)

Answer 7

A if you imply there are more than two cultures, and I would rather say "we need greater understanding" without the 'a'.

Answer 8

The possessive form of "each other" is considered singular, so C is correct. If you mean more than two cultures, then you should replace "each other" with "one another".

Answer 9

A is correct, as the apostrophe after others means the possessive belongs to cultures.

Answer 10

i would say a is correct because we can transform others' cultures to the cultures of others & here we mean plural so the first sentence is correct