"I want a wallet in the same color."
Translation:同じ色の財布が欲しいです。
14 Comments
Can someone explain the 'order of possession' here with の? I.e., why doesn't さいふ の おなじいろ work?
163
I struggled with this somewhat myself, but by now I came to see this use of 「の」 as "further narrowing it down".
「先生」 - a teacher, with no further information
「日本語の先生」 - a specific kind of teacher, being a Japanese teacher
「犬」 - a dog, basically any dog
「私の犬」 - a specific dog, being my dog.
「左」 - left in general
「テーブルの左」 - left of something specific, being left of the table.
The part that narrows it down is in front of the more general part.
In this case, we have
「さいふ」 - a wallet, just any wallet
「おなじいろのさいふ」 - a specific wallet, being a wallet in the same color.
My first thought was the following:
財布は同じ色が欲しいです。
As for the wallet, I want (one of the) same color. My thought was that you were looking at a bunch of wallets and someone asks "which do you want?" Where you specifically want the "same color", instead of wanting a "wallet" (which is obvious since you're at a table of wallets for sale). It seems obvious you want a wallet, so specifying it seems optional, which is where 財布は has the option of being left off comes in. Does my translation work for this scenario, or is it just wrong?
I tried 同じの色の財布 which was not accepted. Is おなじのいろ grammatically correct and if so does it have a different connotation than おなじいろ?
Because in Japanese, like, hate and want are not verbs, and do not take an object. が marks the subject: 財布が欲しいです。The wallet is, wanted. (not a typo)
I'm not 100% on the rule, but I know certain words always use が instead of を, such as 好き, 嫌い, 欲しい, and a couple others. Anytime you want to say you like something, you always use が.
I've also seen を often with things that get acted on, such as を買います (to buy something), を食べます (to eat something), and more complex ones like そこ角を右に曲がります (turn right at that corner).
- 163
Yes, because you got the order mixed up ;)
「さいふ」 is "a wallet", basically any wallet, with no further information given. 「きいろのさいふ」 for example narrows is down, now we're talking about a wallet with a specific color, being yellow. Of all wallets, only the yellow ones are interesting here.
In the exercise sentence, there's no specific color given, but "the same color" (as something else that's not mentioned). So, we get 「おなじいろのさいふ」.
「さいふのいろ」 would be something like "the wallet of the color", and 「おなじさいふのいろ」 would be something like "the same wallet of the color" ;)
