In English we don’t say soup of chicken. We say chicken soup. We take the second noun- chicken- and put it in front of the first noun- soup.
Look at these images and make noun-noun phrases:
Notice that we don’t say cars park. The first noun is always singular because it works like an adjective. Link these words:
Brick Book
Farm Wall
Emergency Road
Water Exit
One way Attack
Heart Bottle
Poetry Produce
Think of another example of each
The Missing Of/De
By moving the second noun in front we avoid using of. This is common in place names:
Trafalgar Square Oxford Street Capitol Hill Blenheim Palace
Often when we use the we cannot do this:
the Tower of London the Statue of Liberty the House of Commons
Sometimes both are possible:
Cambridge University the University of Cambridge
Using the possessive is generally wrong:
the Vatican library NOT the Vatican’s library BUT St Peter’s Square
Do not translate foreign place names:
Camino de Santiago✔ St James Way❌ and worse St James’s Way🤬
Here are some other examples: Edinburgh Castle, the Gulf of Mexico, the Museum of Mankind, the school entrance, the Gare du Nord
Error Correction- change the mistakes in this text.
When I went to London I visited the Museum of Natural History in Kensington. I was staying in a hostel for youth on the other side of the river and decided to walk because the station of the underground was not convenient. I walked across the park of Battersea and stopped at a stall for coffee for breakfast where I ordered a coffee and sandwich of cheese and ham. It started to rain and I didn’t have a coat for rain or an umbrella. I got wet as I crossed the Bridge of Albert and walked towards King’s Road, which is famous for its shops of clothes and restaurants of quality. The wind started to blow, my shoes of leather were letting water in and my socks of wool were soaked. It did not seem like a good idea to go to the museum like this but then I saw a shop for dry cleaning. “Perfect!” I thought. The owner of the shop was surprised when I asked to dry my clothes there but she let me sit on a stool of plastic and wait. It stopped raining. I paid with my card of credit and walked on to the museum.
Here is an exercise you can use to practise adjectival nouns