I am confused about whether or not there are rules about the usage of の in similar situations as the example of the title (it’s only one specific example).
Going through WK or any japanese, I’ve noticed that,
we say :
火山エリア
火山ガス
火山ツアー
but we say :
火山のマグマ
火山の火口
火山のふもと
why not say 火山マグマ or 火山のガス ? Unless they all exist in 2 ways but I highly doubt it… Is there a pattern for such type of の usage ? Or is it specific for each words ?
(although certain type of stuff really make more sense with の and it seems pretty logical (like 火山のふとも makes sense, we need の), but what about kazan-gas and kazan-no-magma as i don’t really see a difference…)
This is just going by gut feel, rather than knowledge, but I don’t think there’s any specific rule.
It’s a question wether the word ‘sounds right’. When you say “xのy”, it sounds like a construction you’ve made up on the spot, whereas “xy” it sound more like a “word”. So words like 火山エリア might have originally been 火山のエリア, but over time became a word by itself. People don’t say 火山のマグマ as often, so it stays with the more ‘technical sounding’ construction.
Not using の means that the whole thing has become a term on its own. A distinct, defined noun.
As an aside, wouldn’t “volcanic magma” sound kind of redundant? Maybe not literally, since magma doesn’t need to actually come from a volcano to exist… but for the average human’s experience, magma is only associated with volcanos. Whereas “volcanic gas” is a specific type of gas we need to distinguish from other gases, like natural gas or… intestinal gas.
So to me that’s probably why 火山ガス has become a specific word while 火山マグマ hasn’t. What other kind of マグマ would you typically ever talk about?
At the end of the day, no, there isn’t a “rule”. It’s just what has become its own term through the course of humans using terms.
I think it’s simply a matter of necessity. Words arise out of necessity. Distinct words are necessary to describe things that have relevance and require disambiguation.
Volcanic gas is a phenomenon that anyone living near a semi-active volcano will encounter.
Volcanic magma doesn’t have much current relevance (although I’m sure the people of Pompeii wish they had a word for it). Possibly in areas of Japan that have tourist spots near active volcanos, 火山マグマ might be used colloquially?
Regular folks basically will never encounter or interact with magma, so I’m not sure that there would be a reason for it to be used colloquially. Lava on the other hand (溶岩) would be more urgently discussed.
Probably also explains why マグマ is a loanword from English, while 溶岩 has existed in Japanese for longer.
That’s pretty much why. The only difference between magma and lava is where it is. Magma is underground. Most lava is volcanic - volcanos are structures from which magma emerges, and erupted magma is called lava. So lava is volcanic magma in all nomenclature, for most intents and purposes.
This discussion made me think that maybe it’s because magma always exists underground as a geological feature and so might be an imported scientific term from this specific scientific area of expertise. Unlike lava, that can pose lethal danger to people and so has always needed to be discussed.
Curiosity got to me, so I went on Wikipedia to look up “magma” and changing the language around a bit. Anecdotal as this is, but all languages I looked up used the word “magma” for magma, so, very likely a scientific geological term that’s internationally used.