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Duolingo translates "Where is the classroom for the Japanese class?" as 「日本語の授業【じゅぎょう】はどこの教室【きょうしつ】ですか?」.

I don't understand the construction 「…はどこの教室…」. My instinct would have been 「日本語の授業の教室はどこですか?」. Are both used? In what circumstances?

My first idea was that this is a の-adjective, with a literal translation of "The Japanese class has a where-ish classroom" but the 「…か?」 at the end tells me that is unlikely.

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    Although kanji are sometimes used, most of the time どこ is written in kana.
    – user1478
    May 19, 2019 at 19:16
  • Thank you for that tip! I've edited the post accordingly. May 19, 2019 at 23:54

1 Answer 1

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Both your instinct and the Duolingo sentences are correct. The sentences can be translated a little differently, but there's no fundamental difference in meaning.

日本語の授業の教室はどこですか?
Where is the Japanese lesson classroom?

日本語の授業はどこの教室ですか?
Which classroom is for Japanese lessons?

I translated どこの教室 as 'which classroom' because that is natural English. Obviously its literal meaning is "Where's classroom", but here I think the Japanese choice of question word is more logical than the English.

I'm starting to speculate now because I'm not a native speaker, but I think that having long lists of nouns joined by の is considered bad style. I think two のs is fine but more than that starts to look clunky. So even though your sentence only has two のs maybe the Duolingo one would be slightly preferrable.

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