Back at the Hindi again

[callunav]

In Hindi, can you use a noun to modify another noun, the way you can in English? For instance, in English my books for school would be school books, my mug that I drink coffee out of is my coffee mug, etc.. Essentially, the first of the two nouns takes on an adjectival role

Comments

[muckefuck]

As a general rule, Hindi prefers to link nouns with the postposition का kā, e.g. स्कूल की किताब skūl kī kitāb "school book", काफ़ी का कप kāfī kā kap "coffee cup". The chief exceptions are in higher-register Sanskritic vocabularies. (Sanskrit is absolutely mad about compounding--so much so that many of the terms for various compounds used by Indo-Europeanists are taken directly from Sanskrit.)

Most of the translations for "foster mother" that I've been able to find also means "wet nurse", which suggests that they might sound too old-fashioned to refer to modern sorts of fosterage. I'll see what I can find in the print dictionaries.

[rfk]

In Hindi, can you use a noun to modify another noun, the way you can in English?

Yes, that happens. I can even think of one example with 5 nouns in a row:
rajasthan rajya path parivahan nigam - rajasthan state road transport corporation