Today I want to talk about possession.
I’m talking grammatical possession here, NOT the Grudge-type possession.
Yikes.
(How do people watch that sorta spooky stuff, anyways?)
This simple intro and explanation of possession is a great early grammar lesson for beginners, even those of you still in the hiragana and katakana learning stages. I kept this really basic, I promise.
In English, we can indicate possession by using the words, my/mine/your/yours/his/hers/ours/theirs, or adding ‘s.
But in Japanese, we use the particle: の (pronounced: no).
Particles (in case you’re familiar with them yet) are a bit like the little laundry tags attached to the neck of t-shirts.
Except Japanese particles at attached to the ends of Japanese words in a sentence, not the back of your shirt.
And instead of giving you care instructions for your clothes, they give you grammatical “care instructions” for Japanese words.
And instead of chaffing your tender neck flesh, they burn your precious brain cells.
At least that’s how I feel for now. Hopefully particles won’t be such a painful part of speech down the road. Only time will tell. 🙂
Let’s start with some basic possessive pronouns created with the の particle:
There’s also:
HIS: かれの (kareno – pronounced ka-ray-no_
HERS: かのじょの (kanojyono – pronounced ka-no-joe-no)
Here’s the basic sentence structure for using の as a possessive particle.
As you can see, it’s pretty simple. You can also see how to use the の particle to indicate possession with ‘s, as is done in English.
Lastly, here’s how to use the の particle to indicate possession in question sentences.
だれ (dare – pronounced da-ray) means whose.
です (desu), which is a verb coupla meaning. it is or to be.
The か (ka) at the end of the sentence is used as a question particle. (I can go more into the ka particle later)
You could also get more specific and ask: だれのすしですか？Whose sushi is that?
And a simple response might be: わたしのです。It is mine. OR あなたのです。It is yours.
Like I said, this is just a super simple intro and explanation to some really basic possessive Japanese grammar. Nothing fancy, just another small piece of the Japanese language learning puzzle. I hope you found it helpful. 🙂
Other links for learning possessive particle and grammar in Japanese:
Thanks for reading!
Shiga Shar
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ありがとう // Arigatou // Thank you!
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