46717
> **これは** 地図に経緯度が使われるようになって **から** の習慣 **であって** 、古い地図には **南が上のものも多い** 。
> ([source: line
> 8-9](https://www.docdroid.net/847v2dg/img-20170413-0001-new.pdf.html))

  1. これは  
What does this これ represent? I guess it shall somehow pick up what was said
before, but for that, I learnt that そ- is used. So I'd like to know whether it
does the same thing as そ- here or something else.

  2. から I guess this から has a temporal function and confers anteriority here? Since I have issues with the sentence in general, I'd like to confirm this, because I really don't know whether my interpretation of the sentence is reliable or not with so many uncertainties around...^^

  3. であって  
て-form of である right?

  4. 南が上のものも多い  
I really don't know what to make of this. First, もの. What is it? I guess its
物, but I'm not 100% sure. Second, as I said, I have no idea what to do with
this phrase. I don't really know what to do with the particle も here, and
while I do know that Japanese can work perfectly with nominal phrases only, I
simply don't know what this part wants to tell me content-wise.

* * *

To give an overview how I interpreted these elements in context, here's my try
at translating it as far as I could:

> _This_ since on maps longitude and latitude being used _habit being there_ ,
> on old maps the south has many upper things/things on top.

In my interpretation, I treated the parts in italics as one syntactical unit.
Their correlate in the Japanese original would be これは...習慣であって.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2017-04-20T00:10:55.637
46714
2021-10-11T23:53:02.293
2021-10-11T23:53:02.293
30454
20172
question
grammar
これは地図に経緯度が使われるようになってからの習慣であって、古い地図には南が上のものも多い
1. これ can refer to what is previously mentioned, just like _this_ in English. In conversations それ is usually used to refer to what the other person said (それは違います = "That's incorrect"), but in written documents これ is primarily used to refer to something just said in the previous sentence.

  2. This から means _since_ or _after_. Because it's used with の, this から modifies the following noun, which is 習慣. See: [using の with と,で, から, まで](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/33605/5010)

  3. Yes であって is the te-form of である. Here this te-form is nothing more than _and_ used to connect two sentences and forms a compound sentence.

  4. 南が上のものも多い: This もの is a pronoun that is used instead of repeating 地図 again. The English equivalent is _one_ as in "I don't have a map, do you have _one_?" This も is simply _also_ , which can be used in place of the subject marker が. **EDIT:** 南が上の is a mini-sentence "南が上だ", used as a relative clause modifying もの. So a more literal translation is "ones where south is upper". [だ is changed to either な or の](http://www.japaneseprofessor.com/reference/grammar/conjugations-of-the-japanese-copula/) depending on the noun before it. Since 上 is a noun also known as no-adjective, you have to use の. See [this](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/4914/5010), too. Similar examples are 襟が緑色のドレス (a dress whose collar is green) and 漢字が大量の本 (a book full of kanji).

* * *

> これは地図に経緯度が使われるようになってからの習慣であって、古い地図には南が上のものも多い。  
>  (literally) This is a custom after longitude and latitude started to be
> used on maps, and, among old maps, ones with south at the top are also
> abundant.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-04-20T04:14:46.627
46717
2017-04-20T12:29:20.543
2017-04-20T12:29:20.543
5010
5010
46714
answer