「うるさい」と言う人は、だれですか？

[NickT]

Ok, my question is this. Does the following question mean "who is the person who said うるさう？", or does it mean "who is the person who was called うるさい？"

「うるさい」と言う人は、だれですか？

So, for example, if the context was a grandmother, talking to her son about why he doesn't teach his children to use chopsticks, and she said the following, what would be the answer to the above question?

私が「はしで食べる練習をさせなさい」と言うと、「うるさい」と言っておこります。

[jenl]

It means 'who is the person who said うるさい', to me, because it doesn't make any sense the other way. My guess would be, the bottom sentence reads something like 'When I tell him/her/them to practice eating with chopsticks, they say 'shut up!' and get angry'.

So I would say the answer is 'the grandchild/grandchildren', but I may be entirely wrong. What comes right before that sentence?

[markdweaver]

Ok, my question is this. Does the following question mean "who is the person who said うるさう？", or does it mean "who is the person who was called うるさい？"

「うるさい」と言う人は、だれですか？

So, for example, if the context was a grandmother, talking to her son about why he doesn't teach his children to use chopsticks, and she said the following, what would be the answer to the above question?

私が「はしで食べる練習をさせなさい」と言うと、「うるさい」と言っておこります。

The first sentence says:
Who is the person who says "urusai?"

The second sentence says:
When I say "practice using your chopsticks," I say "urusai" and become angry.

You need to (1) indicate either a new subject for whoever is saying 'urusai,' or else (2) keep yourself as the subject and use the passive verb form in the last phrase.

(1)
私が子供に「食べるときはおはしを使いなさい」と言うと、こどもが「うるさい」と言っておこります。
(2)
私が子供に「食べるときはおはしを使いなさい」と言うと、こどもに「うるさい」と言われておこられます

I guess I don't understand what's going on behind the conversation.

[Jason]

or does it mean "who is the person who was called うるさい？"

「うるさい」と名付けられた人、かわいそうですよ。

[NickT]

OK, let me explain my reasoning a little bit.

If XXXという映画 means "the movie called XXX" and YYYという本 means "the book called YYY", then I figured that うるさいという人 meant "the person called うるさい", or more specifically in this case "the person who was called noisy"

The proper translation is " When I (the grandmother) say to him (my son) "You should make them (your children) practice using chopsticks, he just says 「うるさい」 and gets angry."

So, my answer to 「うるさい」と言う人は、だれですか？ was おばあさん, because she was called うるさい by her son.

But, the correct answer was むすこ, because he is the person who said 「うるさい」 and that is what the question was asking.

I just don't quite get how you know when to translate という as "said", and when to translate it as "called". Is there a way to tell?

[Jason]

Ok, let's backup and take a look at the phrase XというY. Depending how it's used, it actually has 3 different possible meanings.

1)Y who said "X"
2)Y that it called "X"
3)the X that is a Y/the Y that is defined as X

One clue that it may be use 1 is the use of the kanji 言. When used in other ways, the phrase is usually written in all kana, という. You can't depend on this though as this isn't a hard and fast rule that gets followed all the time. You'll have to look at the context, too. It should be really clear from the sentence and the question that this is the use they meant.

2 is pretty straightforward. The big thing to note here is that in this use X is *always* a noun phrase. You cannot use adjectives and other non-noun words in this way to say "Y is called X." This is because 2 and 3 are very closely related (I split them just to make these points clearer). The "called" in this instance is not a "someone called you X" kind of "called." Think of it more like "Y that is named X." If you wanted to say "the person who was called noisy", you need the past, passive form of 言う. Note that this is actually the quoting 言う like in use 1 as you can't use uses 2 or 3 for this kind of "called."

-うるさいと言われたおばあさんは、生意気な息子の頭をぶん殴った。
-"The grandmother who was called noisy smacked her arrogant son on the head."

When non-noun words are used as X, it means "an X that's a Y" or probably in more natural Enlish, "the Y, X."

-「うるさい」という表現は、英語で「noisy」という意味します。
-"The expression, 'urusai', means 'noisy' in English."

There's more about いう on Tae Kim's site. It's a good read since いう is kind of amorphous and has a wide range of uses.

[NickT]

Thanks Jason, that was really clear.

Actually, I think the thing that confused me most was the present tense と言う　to quote something that was essentially said in the past. If it had been と言った or と言われた or even と言われる I think I would have understood.

Of course, with the 「ｘｘｘ」と言うと、「ｙｙｙ」と言う construction, it doesn't mean "he said yyy" in the past, it means "he says yyy whenever I say xxx", both in the past and probably again in the future.

Incidentally, the transcipt used the kanji と言う, but since this was an audio comprehension question, I didn't have the benefit of knowing that when I was actually answering the question (only when when I was trying to figure out why I had got it wrong).