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In one exercise I'm doing, it has the following sentence:

世界で一番木の古い建物は法隆寺です。

In this case, the position of the adjective 古い looks odd to me. I normally find it appear before noun or noun phrase, so I think it should be:

世界で一番古い木の建物は法隆寺です。

Is there a mistake with printing or something I should know about here?

Based on the content of that exercise, the sentence has the English translation as follows:

The oldest wooden building in the world.

istrasci
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Khanh Tran
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2 Answers2

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The two phrases are not identical. The difference is as follows:

  1. 世界で一番木の古い建物 = the building whose wood is oldest in the world
  2. 世界で一番古い木の建物 = the oldest wooden building in the world

The latter simply refers to the oldest building made of wood, which is 法隆寺. The former refers to a building which uses very old tree. Strictly speaking, the building itself does not necessarily have to be old. Yes, if you have 10000-year-old trees, you can use them and start building a 世界で一番木の古い建物 today. (Well, this is a nit-picky discussion; practically speaking, they refer to almost the same thing...)

木の古い建物 is the same as 木が古い建物, which has a relative clause that modifies 建物. If you know how to parse 鼻の長いゾウ, 心が綺麗な人, 背の高い男 and so on, you can parse 木の古い建物 the same way. (See this if you are unsure.)

naruto
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    Just to clarify, are you saying that 世界で一番木の古い建物 should not be translated as "the oldest wooden building in the world"? – kandyman Aug 08 '20 at 17:26
  • @kandyman 世界で一番木の古い建物 is a bit puzzling, so I would see the context or ask the original writer for clarification. It may be "the oldest wooden building" or "the building made of the oldest wood". – naruto Aug 09 '20 at 01:18
  • @kandyman I added the context: Based on the content of that exercise, the sentence has the English translation as follows: The oldest building in the world. – Khanh Tran Aug 10 '20 at 06:19
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    @petwho do you mean “the oldest wooden building”? – kandyman Aug 10 '20 at 07:18
  • @kandyman edited man, thanks for pointing out! – Khanh Tran Aug 11 '20 at 01:28
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    @petwho If you want to simply say "the oldest wooden building", it's way more natural to say 一番古い木の建物, as you pointed out. Your exercise is not wrong, but it's a little odd... – naruto Aug 11 '20 at 01:49
  • @naruto That's exactly what I think, there should be some revise for the source countent. – Khanh Tran Aug 12 '20 at 04:16
  • @naruto Is it similar to the concept of using の as noun modifier when done after another particle like, 7時からのパーティーに行きます (Wherein の enables 7 to modify from 7, the noun party rather than 行きます i.e. party from 7 (or party starting from 7))? or is it something else? – APK Aug 25 '20 at 09:21
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This appears to be the が to の conversion which happens in relative clauses and attributive clauses. The usual 木が古い gets converted to 木の古い because it is embedded in the clause and is modifying a noun. See below for a similar discussion on this topic:

As for using 木が古い instead 古い木, this is not uncommon when describing some kind of attribute or a personality trait. The format is NounがAdjective where the adjective describes one particular attribute of the noun (but implies there are others).

kandyman
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  • Is 木 an noun here? I read it as tree at first but it should be translated as the adjective “wooden”, right? – Ragaroni Aug 06 '20 at 09:09
  • Ah, I hadn't considered that. In that case, disregard my answer. I'll delete it. – kandyman Aug 06 '20 at 09:52
  • When 木 is translated as "wooden", isn't that just to produce more idiomatic English? In Japanese, it should still be a noun. In this case, the sentence literally talks about the building where the wood (used to build it) is the oldest in the world. So I think kandyman's answer that this is an issue with が/の conversion still stands. – Kaskade Aug 06 '20 at 10:32
  • I'm still not sure about this I do think 一番木の古い建物 can be translated as 'oldest wooden building' since the literal translation can be 'building with the oldest wood', using the attributive phrasing I reference in my answer. – kandyman Aug 07 '20 at 14:22