Confusing Beginning of Sentence

[Dariat]

Hello.

I have some trouble understanding the following sentence:

ボーイング７８７という飛行機に、胴体が長くて、今までより多くの人が乗ることができる新しいタイプの飛行機ができました。

I am confused by 「飛行機」 appearing twice in the sentence, first with the に-particle and a second time with the が-particle. Without the beginning (until the first comma), the sentence would make perfect sense to me. But with it I am unsure about the grammatical functions of the individual parts and how to translate them.

Help would be much appreciated.

[luckydaikon2698]

Hello! The beginning part of the sentence is clarifying that it is specifically the 飛行機 called a Boeing 787. Perhaps removing the longer relative clause in the middle will help you digest this sentence. Let's take a look:

ボーイング７８７という飛行機に、新しいタイプの飛行機ができました。

I would maybe say To the class of airplanes known as a Boeing 787, a new type of of plane has been made/added/etc. Then you can go back and look at the words describing the new type.

The beginning part is telling you that this is a new type of airplane, but that it belongs to an already existing group of planes, so you know that they are improving on the previous 787s, I think.

~という is used a lot to let us know we are talking about a specific part of a larger group of items, places, etc. We do this in English too, a lot of times to introduce something that might be new to the listener. For example, "I'm eating a kind of fruit called a lychee."

So, I hope that helps. I'm only in the intermediate level myself, so that is just my interpretation. Good luck! I see you are also reading NHK News Web Easy, I've been trying to make that a habit myself.

[Dariat]

Thank you. That's why I suspected as well.

[community.japanese]

luckydaikon2698 san,
Thank you for the explanation.
That is really good.

Dariat san,
If you still have questions, please feel free to ask us.

Yuki 　由紀
Team JapanesePod101.com