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Park sang joon Posted 10 years ago
Grammar

The analysis of a text #3

Shiratori Sakuto is 28, but has the intelligence of a 6-year-old boy. He works for Dream Flower Service, a flower distribution centre which provides employment for problem youth. One day, he and a colleague, Yanagawa Ryuichi, delivers a rose bouquet to the apartment building where Mochizuki Haruka lives. Because Haruka does not know that the deliveryman is mentally challenged, she is shocked by his response and tries to call the police. Haruka works for a brain physiology research centre where Professor Hachisuka Daigo has been studying the improvement of mental performance. He has succeeded in lab experiments on a white mouse called Algernon. Sakuto is transformed into a genius through surgery. But Algernon’s new intelligence begins to fade, and he dies. Sakuto realises that his genius, too, is destined to leave him.

I'd like to know why it is "problem youth," not "youth with problem."
Thank you in advance for your help.
  

Top answer

" "problem" is countable, so "with problem" wouldn't work. That aside, "with problems" doesn't work either, but only because the English-speaking community has invented the term "problem youth" as a fixed expression (or idiom) for "youth with problems". CJ

— CalifJim

  • " "problem" is countable, so "with problem" wouldn't work.
  • That aside, "with problems" doesn't work either, but only because the English-speaking community has invented the term "problem youth" as a fixed expression (or idiom) for "youth with problems".
  • CJ
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1 Answers
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park sang joonI'd like to know why it is "problem youth," not "youth with problem."
"problem" is countable, so "with problem" wouldn't work. That aside, "with problems" doesn't work either, but only because the English-speaking community has invented the term "problem youth" as a fixed expression (or idiom) for "youth with problems".

CJ
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