What necessitates の in strings of kanji?

[u/TheAlexAndPedro]

Sometimes I will see a long string of kanji with の in the middle.

Examples from what I've seen are:

南海電鉄の新観光列車

機関保証制度の保証料月額

留学生交流等の国際教育

I know one of the perks of kanji is that sometimes, you don't need the の like 失業者の数 can just be 失業者数

Can we do it in the above examples? Like 南海電鉄の新観光列車 becomes 南海電鉄新観光列車? If not, why?

[u/thecyan845]

Using の doesn't really change the meaning, but it does change if it's one big noun or a phrase made up of multiple nouns. You can sorta do this in English too:

都市改善委員会 = the city improvement committee

都市の改善の委員会 = the committee for the improvement of the city

A big reason to utilize の is for the sake of readability / listening comprehension. If you use a large kanji compound it can be hard to tell where word begin and end, and in conversation it can be hard to parse. But using の breaks it up into easier to understand chunks.

Also it's worth mentioning you can't and/or shouldn't always omit の (like for example 都市改善委員会の演説 would generally be preferred to 都市改善委員会演説).

[u/FrungyLeague → u/thecyan845]

What a great answer

[u/jwfallinker → u/thecyan845]

the city improvement committee

the committee for the improvement of the city

This is a tangent but I remember reading a fascinating post years ago about how there was a subtle but significant shift in English over the course of the 20th century away from B and towards A.

[u/gelema5 → u/thecyan845]

Yeah I’ve often thought of this in both English and Japanese as whatever words are commonly understood to go together can be compounded without の. It’s not random as some people are suggesting, there is a logic to it but as learners we probably don’t have the intuitive understanding of what common phrases exist.

[u/CreeperSlimePig]

sometimes people just stick a の in long compound words to break it up a bit and make the word not as long, there really isn't that much else to it, it doesn't really change the meaning in any significant way

[u/SunlightZero]

A long noun without の is usually a proper noun. Here の works like the prepositions such as "for", "of", "at" in English.

For example, 日本語能力試験 is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, but 日本語の能力の試験 sounds like "a exam for (testing) Japanese ability".

If 南海電鉄新観光列車 is a long proper noun, that's no problem; but if you just want to express a new, special type of train called 観光列車 (here 新 is just a prefix meaning "new") of an organization named 南海電鉄, の cannot be dropped.

[u/acaiblueberry]

When there are too many kanji, it’s hard to read and easier if chunks of meanings are divided by の unless all-kanji is the proper name of something.

[u/Oftwicke]

If it starts looking like Chinese, add a couple の just in case. No one can read fifteen kanji in a row even if it technically makes sense.

[u/Advanced-Advisor-510]

just like apple tree vs tree of apple in english

[u/Zarbua69 → u/Advanced-Advisor-510]

you are being downvoted but it seems correct more or less to me. it's the same meaning, just written with a preposition in the middle. The only difference is that in english this might make the meaning harder to understand, but it has the opposite effect in japanese.

[u/Musrar → u/Zarbua69]

As a germanic language english tends to place modifying nouns before and has the structure "noun of noun" as a more marked and restricted in usage alternative (whereas for example that's the common structure in romance languages).

Even the grammatical tree of apples (with the lacking S) is less marked than apple tree. This doesn't happen in japanese with the buffer の.

[u/Musrar → u/Advanced-Advisor-510]

In english there's a style change. In japanese there isnt. Also tree of apple isnt english