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I have to write this in my project acknowledgment:

I am sincerely thankful to my class teacher ...

But, the class teacher is not mine alone, she's of all the students of the class. But then, this project is mine alone, not everyone's.

I am not able to grasp this. What should I write: "my" or "our" ? Both the above facts have equal weightage too. Please help me overcome this confusion.

I saw this question on duplicate list but it isn't related in this context.

Thanks!

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    One can say 'my father' even if he has a brother. Likewise, in this case, you can say either 'our teacher' or 'my teacher'. They're both fine. 'Our' may be more appropriate if you're not speaking only about yourself but your whole group, for example if you're talking as a representative for your whole class.
    – user1513
    Commented May 18, 2014 at 17:01

2 Answers 2

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Both are correct in their own senses.

I am sincerely thankful to my/our class teacher.

And as for your question about the project being your own, the subject that we speak of in the sentence is not the project but the teacher, and as such your class teacher is the teacher of all her students, not just you.

If the subject were a project, like:

I am thankful to everyone who contributed towards my project.

Here, we would use my instead of our because it is solely your project, not that of the class or a group of students.

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In addition to Invoker's answer, the context of the conversation also influences whether you use my or our.

If you are speaking to someone who shares your teacher, you would use our. For example:

Did you enjoy today's lecture? I thought our teacher did a good job.

In this context, it is not semantically correct to use my, as it implies that your classmate does not actually have the same teacher as you, which is false.

If you are speaking to someone not in your class, you would typically use my. For example:

What happened at school today? My class's teacher gave a lecture to the entire student body.

Here, using my is technically semantically more correct. However, using our is acceptable, because it's understood that our is used to convey membership in a larger group (the class) rather than meaning that the listener also shares your teacher.

Finally, note the slight changes I have made to the phrase in question: our teacher and my class's teacher. These are American English idiomatic phrasings. Class is omitted because it's understood, or changed to the possessive because that's simply the construction of choice. In the latter case, the emphasis is on class, which has a teacher, hence the possessive. Class teacher is both perfectly grammatical and the idiomatic phrasing of choice in British English.

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