I want to abstract material from the type of item to give the player a lot of options in crafting. Now I'm running into a language problem, take iron and wood iron is written the same as an adjective and wood transforms to wooden. So when the player creates a table from wood material it says "Wood Table" instead of "Wooden Table". Now I am not a native English speaker so I don't really know the exact rules create word combinations like these but I guess I just need to have a noun, adjective and verb for each word. Then just build a String like "Player created a " + wood.getAdjective + " " + item.getType + " in the workplace.".

So my first question is would this work for each possible combination?

This wheel has probably been invented already, so where do I look? At the moment I just need a couple dozen of materials so I probably just write a JSON file with each one. But I like to keep it scalable and perhaps there are ready to use lists or JSON files already available?

Luckily adjectives in English are fairly simple compared to the rest of the language.  I think that making a material-to-adjective lookup table should work.  In some cases the adjective has the same spelling as the noun.

To expand your example to make sure I understand what you mean:

Wood (noun) -> Wooden (adjective)

Iron -> Iron (there is no separate adjective spelling like "ironen")

Gold -> Golden

Lead -> Lead ("leaden" was used to describe the material long ago, but now it primarily means "dull, heavy, slow, or lead colored")

Plastic -> Plastic

I'm trying to think of cases where "{material adjective} {item noun}" wouldn't work, but I can't think of any cases right now.

In English, the only complex rules I remember for adjectives is that when multiple adjectives are attached to one noun, we write them in a specific order, based on their category.  We would put size before color:  "big red dog", instead of "red big dog".

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/about-adjectives-and-adverbs/adjectives-order

21 minutes ago, Nypyren said:

In English, the only complex rules I remember for adjectives is that when multiple adjectives are attached to one noun, we write them in a specific order, based on their category.  We would put size before color:  "big red dog", instead of "red big dog".

And even then, there are exceptions.

"Bad" is an opinion, and would normally be listed first if there are multiple adjectives (similar to "lovely" and "beautiful", as listed as examples). However, you don't say "bad, big wolf", you say "big, bad wolf".

Verbs are a lot harder to deal with.  In some cases, there are different verbs which are sort of the same thing, but are different depending on the noun being acted on:

For "lawn": (intransitive) a lawn can {grow, dry out, die}.  You can (transitive) {mow, water, seed} a lawn.

For "hair": (intransitive) hair can {grow, recede, fall out}.  You can (transitive) {cut, wash} hair.

After figuring out which verb(s) are compatible, you still need to conjugate the verb:

subject-verb agreement:  "I water the lawn"  "He waters the lawn"  "The owls watch me"  "The owl watches me".

tenses:  "I have watered the lawn" "I will water the lawn"

This can be extremely complicated since there are different types of verbs which behave differently, as well as modal and auxiliary verbs which change the rules.

• "The cans can hold water"
• "The can can hold water"   // the "can" between the noun and verb here...  
• "The cans hold water"
• "The can holds water"     // ...means you don't use "holds" like in this case.

If I understand correctly, you want to put descriptors in front of crafted item names, right? So for example you want wood to create a "wooden table"?

I think you're doing something unnecessary and pedantic. My default would be to say "wood table", "steel table", "glass table", etc. I can't think of any situation where that would be a problem.

Of course, you could always just define each version explicitly. That's what Minetest does. It may seem less "scalable", but it also means you can define them as actually being different and have more creative control in terms of how items are constructed.

It does not need to get too complicated. I won't be writing complete sentences but I am bothered by showing "Wood Table" instead of "Wooden Table". I would like to hear more opinions on this being "unnecessary and pedantic". If there is no easy solution I might just show it as a "Table" and have the option to further inspect it which will show "Material: Wood".