# 背の高い男の人



## rainbowizard

Hi,
I am dealing with the following sentence:
背の高い男の人はT シャツを着ています
_The tall guy is wearing a T-shirt _
Why the adjective 高い and not simply the noun 高 is used...? ... 背の高男の人はT シャツを着ています ... or 背の高の男の人はT シャツを着ています ... sound so weird?  

The same for 背の低い男の人はT シャツを着ています ... Why the adjective 低い and not simply the noun 低 is used...?

I mean, I read somewhere on a grammar book that the two terms around の should always be two substantives (as by the way 男の人 in the same example are).
Why is that not the case? 

I think I did not understood - more in general - what are the grammar rules that stay behind the usage of の particle 

May you please help me?
thank you


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## animelover

Answered here: http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2678086

Parse it as  背-の-(高い男)

背が高い is a fixed expression, which is a main factor in explaining why you should stick with the adjective. Also, if A,B,C are nouns, you can say AのBC only when BC constitutes an acceptable compound, otherwise it is AのBのC.


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## rainbowizard

Danke schön, animelover
I think I will return to your post on attributive sentences as soon as I get more acquainted with advanced-japanese 
For now I will take as a general rule that の can be use to join two nouns or more in general two "tokens" where the first may be considered somehow as "an adjective" of the latter... and I will try to parse my examples accordingly...

Just let me do a final naive example ... I can say "a red apple" in the following ways:
赤のリンゴ
赤いリンゴ

but I cannot say
赤いのリンゴ 

correct?

Thank you very much again!
RW


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## animelover

rainbowizard said:


> Danke schön, animeloverthat の can be use to join two nouns or more in general two "tokens" where the first may be considered somehow as "an adjective" of the latter...


If it makes it easier to understand, consider the English phrase "Stephen's red apple".  's is the English genitive marker, and it can only be used to connect two nouns. If "red" is an adjective (and not the noun Red), you cannot say "Stephen's red" (or "Stephan's long"), yet "Stephen's red apple" and "Stephen's long leg" is possible. The reason is the same as in Japanese, the phrase is interpreted as [Stephen] 's [red apple]. 

Similarly, 背の低い男 you can just interpreted as (背) の (低い男).



> I can say: 赤(色)のリンゴ and 赤いリンゴ.


Yes. 赤(あか)リンゴ is possible as well, where 赤 closely joins to リンゴ, so that 赤リンゴ is like one noun, "a red-apple", instead of a modified noun; "an apple which is red".



> But I cannot say 赤いのリンゴ


Yes, unless you're only _mentioning_ the string 赤い (so that it effectively becomes a noun); imagine a company with the name 赤い or an apple with 赤い written on it, then you could refer to it as a 「赤い」のリンゴ. Same as in English, if there were a company called "Red", you could say "Red" 's apple.


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## rainbowizard

「赤(*色*)のリンゴ」 has definetly let me understand the topic  ... since I can translate it: _[an apple] of [red colour] _wich is slightly different from 赤いリンゴ = _a red coloured apple.
_Ok I think it's clear now. Thank you!



animelover said:


> Yes, unless you're only _mentioning_ the string 赤い (so that it effectively becomes a noun); imagine a company with the name 赤い or an apple with 赤い written on it, then you could refer to it as a 「赤い」のリンゴ. Same as in English, if there were a company called "Red", you could say "Red" 's apple.



Pretty clear! In that case I would probably also translate 「赤い」のリンゴ  
as "An _AKAI'_s apple" romanizing the name of the company but leaving it as its original.


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## Tonky

rainbowizard said:


> 「赤(*色*)のリンゴ」 has definetly let me understand the topic  ... since I can translate it: _[an apple] of [red colour] _wich is slightly different from 赤いリンゴ = _a red coloured apple.
> _Ok I think it's clear now.


Sorry to interrupt after it is cleared for you, but I'm afraid we do not normally say "赤のリンゴ", but instead say 赤リンゴ, 赤いリンゴ or 赤色のリンゴ to mean a red apple or an apple of red color. 赤のリンゴ sounds more like a product name rather than a red apple. 
When の is used, the word connected would not function as an adjective. 「赤」のリンゴ would be the same as 「赤い」のリンゴ as explained above, and 「赤」will be considered to be a proper noun/name, or the whole「赤のリンゴ」to be a name of a product, say, some candies or a title for stationary like "Hello Kitty".

There is a subtle difference between 赤色のリンゴ and 赤リンゴ/赤いリンゴ, too.
赤色のリンゴ does not always have to be a real apple and the color may be too red or artificial for that of an apple. It sounds very different from 赤いリンゴ and may sound rather awkward if you do mean a normal red apple.

e.g.
青リンゴ = *green* apple
青いリンゴ = *unripe* apple or *green* apple　(青いトマト = unripe tomato)
青色のリンゴ = apple of *blue* color, not green usually unless the speaker is a very old Japanese.
緑色のリンゴ = apple of *green* color
(The issue here is that old Japanese people call green 青, and we still keep this habit of calling green 青 for certain things, like 青信号 for green traffic lights.)

Also, making nouns out of adjectives such as 赤い→赤、青い→青 works, but neither 低い→低 nor 高い→高 works unless it is used as Kango, a word of Chinese origin (e.g. 高温 = high temperature, 低気圧 = low pressure, these 高/低 are not nouns but function as adjectives).


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## rainbowizard

Tonky said:


> Sorry to interrupt after it is cleared for you, but I'm afraid we do not normally say "赤のリンゴ", but instead say 赤リンゴ, 赤いリンゴ or 赤色のリンゴ to mean a red apple or an apple of red color.


大丈夫 Tonky, your post is very welcome 

... following your clarification, I think that when I say 赤色のリンゴ it should sound in Italian as "una mela colorata di rosso" as if it was painted in red by someone.



Tonky said:


> The issue here is that old Japanese people call green 青, and we still keep this habit of calling green 青 for certain things, like 青信号 for green traffic lights.



Good to know  ... and indeed I know that traffic lights in Japan are actually blue (青) orange/yellow and red and not green, orange/yellow and red as in Italy or in Europe (as far as I know).


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## Tonky

rainbowizard said:


> and indeed I know that traffic lights in Japan are actually blue (青) orange/yellow and red and not green, orange/yellow and red as in Italy or in Europe (as far as I know).


Hmm does this↓ look blue to you? (But yes, many are blue-green or greenish blue.)
http://www.blackdesign.jp/01design/104magazineAd/034_JAF_1.html

Off topic, but it's interesting that you say "orange/yellow" as one. Maybe I should make a new thread to talk about colors


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## rainbowizard

Tonky said:


> Hmm does this↓ look blue to you? (But yes, many are blue-green or greenish blue.)
> http://www.blackdesign.jp/01design/104magazineAd/034_JAF_1.html
> 
> Off topic, but it's interesting that you say "orange/yellow" as one. Maybe I should make a new thread to talk about colors



Well ... your example is definetly green, however this: http://jto.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ek20130225a1a.jpg is almost blue.

About "Orange/Yellow" ... well it's me I forgot that the official color name of the middle light in traffic-lights. It should be _"amber".
_I also found this about 青 and 緑 for traffic-lights:


> The label ao for a green light did not appear so out of the ordinary at first, because of the remaining associations of the word ao with greenness. But over time, the discrepancy between the green color and the dominant meaning of the word ao began to feel jarring. Nations with a weaker spine might have opted for the feeble solution of simply changing the official name of the go light to midori. Not so the Japanese. Rather than alter the name to fit reality, the Japanese government decreed in 1973 that reality should be altered to fit the name: henceforth, go lights would be a color that better corresponded to the dominant meaning of ao. Alas, it was impossible to change the color to real blue, because Japan is party to an international convention that ensures road signs have a measure of uniformity around the globe. The solution was thus to make the ao light as bluish as possible while still being officially green.


from _Through The Language Glass - why the world looks different in other languages_, by Guy Deutscher
http://books.google.it/books?id=oore9h_L48EC&pg=PA218&lpg=PA218#v=onepage&q&f=false

nevertheless... we are definetly OOT ... maybe we should move this discussion into "Cultural Discussions" forum 
(considering my nickname, of course I am interested in colours )
RW


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## Tonky

rainbowizard said:


> Well ... your example is definetly green, however this: http://jto.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ek20130225a1a.jpg is almost blue.


Ah yes, that one looks blue, but I'm afraid it has a bit to do with the color display. (I myself have never visited 日光 and haven't got to see that particular one, though.)



> About "Orange/Yellow" ... well it's me I forgot that the official color name of the middle light in traffic-lights. It should be _"amber".
> _I also found this about 青 and 緑 for traffic-lights:
> 
> from _Through The Language Glass - why the world looks different in other languages_, by Guy Deutscher
> http://books.google.it/books?id=oore9h_L48EC&pg=PA218&lpg=PA218#v=onepage&q&f=false


Aye, I can imagine, but what I officially heard as the reason of it being blue-ish was to help people with color vision deficiency, and I actually assumed it to be the same all over the world. 
**edit**
I just checked and a wiki page does say it is to help the color blind  I guess we Japanese got a great excuse!


> 1970年代以降のものは、赤緑色盲など色覚障害に配慮して緑色部分の色を国際基準から逸脱しない、ぎりぎりまで青色に近づけた色に変更されている。


http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/信号機#.E8.BB.8A.E4.B8.A1.E7.94.A8.E4.BF.A1.E5.8F.B7.E6.A9.9F
also, 


> これは戦前、信号機が日本に初めて導入された際、マスメディアが「緑信号」を「青信号」と表現したことによるものである。また日本語表現上の「青」は青葉・青虫・青野菜など「green」と「blue」を厳密に区別しない（緑をさす「青」を参照）という文化的傾向があり「青信号」表現が社会的に定着した。第二次大戦までの法令では「緑信号」と記していたが、第二次大戦後の1947年に、法令でも「青信号」に変更した。


http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/信号機#.E3.81.9D.E3.81.AE.E4.BB.96
(The underlinedof the quote says; The official documented law and order till WW2 used "緑信号", but also changed it to "青信号" in 1947, after WW2. So, Japanese Media started calling it blue and everyone followed according to that page.) 



> nevertheless... we are definetly OOT ... maybe we should move this discussion into "Cultural Discussions" forum
> (considering my nickname, of course I am interested in colours )
> RW


Too bad, that forum is closed now. May have to look for an existing thread that talks about the same/similar topic.
(I actually wanted to ask how many colors a rainbow has in Italy)


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