男である子 vs 男の子

Japanese Language
1

Wanted to share something funny/interesting to me that I read in this textbook: 男の子 can also be replaced with 男である子 “in formal writing.”

that’s the tdlr. Timothy J. Vance’s book, “The Sounds of Japanese,” 2008, page 157, you can find free PDF downloads of the book online.

anyway, it made me wonder why i’ve never read 男の子 as “man’s boy” or “the/a man’s boy.” Or (maybe even) worse, 男の人 as…

2

Because as well as marking posession, の an also mark when a noun is modifying another noun. When you’ve got an adjective modifying a noun, you can just attach them straight together - 若い人, a young person - but when you’ve got a noun modifying a noun, you need to insert a の in between. So 男の子 is a child who-is-a-boy.

Similarly, for example, 日本語の先生 or 東の村 and so forth.

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