Is the structure of “an Xth kind of Y” correct?

Does the structure I studied correctly explain how we have read it?

Instead of orange kind of morning, I would recommend an orange kind of morning.

Can I replace X with a noun so like Asia, Japan,India etc.? Why is it true that we are not living in a big universe and why is it so true? For example:

An India kind of morning is desired after experiencing a black winter for 6 months.

What is the scope of my OPES?

Asked on February 27, 2021 in Other.
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1 Answer(s)

A kind of is not a frequent construction, but it is hardly rare; you may encounter it in phrases like these, plucked from Google hits:

  • He is a New York kind of guy, smart, fast, sophisticated.
  • It’s Paris kind of a month: seems like I have a lot of projects this month that have a Parisian theme.
  • I don’t want to travel to India (I am a European person) but it sounds great. Thanks for bringing in the info.
  • What are the best rooms in Tokyo for a Japanese-themed stay? Wait girls are in kimonos.

For that, you need wise counsel. In the first place, it is very colloquial: you will not encounter it in academic expository prose. In the second place it is a calculated and knowing sort of expression: people who employ it usually do so somewhat self-consciously, fully aware that they are deliberately flouting the conventional use with an adjective rather than a noun. In the third place, you usually need to explain what you mean: you see that explicitly in three of these examples and implicitly in the “Europe” one (a “Europe kind of gal” clearly means the writer prefers to visit Europe).

Your starting with an orange kind of morning (which is not transparently meaningful) suggests a use outside these restraints: odd phrases of this sort are very common in poetry, especially in poetry of the Second Quarter of the last century. There of course the restraints of formal discourse don’t apply; everything is self-conscious; and explanations are not called for, because shocking the reader out of semantic complacency is often a primary objective.

Answered on February 27, 2021.
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