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"She is the girl who is with the long hair."

This appeared in a primary school textbook but I question if this phrasing is indeed grammatically correct. As a native English speaker, it simply "feels off" to me and I cannot find even one example of this structure being used online or otherwise.

I'm no grammarian, so I can't quite express why it feels off other than several items come off as unnecessary or superfluous.

Thanks in advance.

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    I can't detect any grammar error, it's just an unusual sentence. It doesn't mean she is the girl who has long hair, but that's just semantic. If the long hair was her significant other, it seems perfectly correct to say that she is with the long hair.
    – Mike Graham
    Commented Sep 30, 2020 at 7:33
  • You say it was it a textbook intended for primary school use. Was it intended for use in a majority English-speaking country and for use by speakers of English as a first language? As @MikeGraham says it's not ungrammatical but as you say it's not a normal English expression either. However it might make more sense in full context, can you remember any more about it?
    – BoldBen
    Commented Sep 30, 2020 at 7:57
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    @Dane It sounds as though it is either a literal translation from Han or Cantonese or a mistake by a Chinese author. We do, of course, say both "She is the girl with the long hair" and "She is the girl who has long hair". I wonder if the author has mixed up the two ways of expressing the same thing. Whatever has happened it's going to confuse the kids.
    – BoldBen
    Commented Sep 30, 2020 at 9:40
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    'She is the woman who is with child' might cause the editors a problem.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Sep 30, 2020 at 11:38
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    It is not idiomatic and should not be in a child's textbook.
    – Hot Licks
    Commented Sep 30, 2020 at 11:51

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It reads strangely because hair is a part of a person (inanimate) and the sentence treats it as though it were a person or an external object. "He's the guy with the eagle tats." "She's the girl with the black fingernails." Notice how you don't need "who is" in there? You have or do not have long hair; it is not who is with as though she was with child.

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It feel weird to me too, but I think it feels weird because this is expressing one and only, but a girl with long hair is pretty common.

Here is an example “this is the rocket that was launched to destroy the moon” This sounds pretty common because this either haven’t been done/been done rarely.

Hope this helped you! :)

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