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Elizabeth
My father is a businessman. My father's occupation is a businessman or is businessman?
need 'a'?
Aug 26, 2010 1:22 PM
Answers · 6
1
1) My father is a businessman.
or, you can say...
2) My father works AS a businessman.
Hope that helps,
Kind Regards, Choppy
August 26, 2010
1
Choppy has listed a few of the usual ways to express the idea that your father is a businessman.
My father's occupation is a businessman....This is wrong. An occupation cannot be a person.
My father's occupation is businessman....correct though unusual.
If you consider businessman as a general term synonymous with the occupation it represents (business). then your sentence makes sense. Businessman here does not refer to an individual person; it refers to to all businessmen in general, who as a group represent the occupation. If used as a general term 'businessman' would NOT require an article.
Example
What a work of art is man. (Shakespeare)......"Man" is used as a general term for the entire human race
My father's occupation is "businessman".....If you put the word between quotation marks, to indicate that you are using the term in a special way, a grammar teacher would have no reason for objection. :)
More accurate would be...
My father's occupation is business.
My dentist's occupation is dentistry.
August 27, 2010
i am a student
June 5, 2023
My father is a businessman how to say this in formal way
October 31, 2021
my father is a busnessman or my father has his own business.
August 26, 2010
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Elizabeth
Language Skills
Chinese (Mandarin), English, Spanish
Learning Language
English, Spanish
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