Trying to write a post on the の particle has been quite the challenge as there are so many
uses for it. Often times, I would read an article and be like, “Ok cool I got it” - only to
discover a myriad of other uses I didn’t know about. There are a variety of uses I’m not going
to write below as I’m still learning them - but I want to write down the ones I think I understand
and can describe to some degree ^.^
Note that I’m only going to be talking about
のin relation to nouns in this post. You can also use it with verbs, adjectives, as a sentence ender, etc - but that’s a topic for another day.
Possession
One of the most common and easy to understand uses of the の particle is the idea of using it
to represent possession. Saying A の B means that B belongs to A. For instance, the sentence
先生の傘です means, “(It) is the teacher’s umbrella” - and これはお父さんの時計だ means,
“This is dad’s watch.”
In this case, the の particle behaves a lot like the 's does in English. However, it can also
be used for possessive pronouns (aka things like mine / yours). For example, you can combine の
with the pronoun 私 (I / me) to become “mine”. You can also combine it with あなた (you) to
become “yours” (although that would be really rude as you’re never supposed to say you in Japanese -
you’d want to use the person’s name instead).
Position or Location
The の particle can also be used to describe a nouns position / location in space. Some examples
include:
氷の上- on top of ice学校の前- the area in front of the schoolいすの下- below the desk指の先- the tip of one’s fingers
In this case, you can almost think of の as the word of in English - you just have to read it
from the right to the left. So 氷の上 would be “top 上 (of the) ice 氷” and 学校の前 would be
“(in) front 前 (of the) school 学校)”.
That being said, there are plenty of cases where thinking of it as of might cause you trouble.
For instance, 日本の車 would not be a car of Japan but, would rather, mean a car from Japan.
Modifying a nouns kind or category
Some nouns, like “teacher” can be expanded on. For instance, what do they teach and to what group
of students? The の particle can be used to provide this information!
For instance, if you wanted to say “a college professor”, you would say: 大学の先生 (university +
の + professor). Or, if you wanted to say, “an english teacher”, you would say: 英語の先生
(english + の + teacher).
A full sentence example would be: この学校は料理の学校です (This school is a cooking school).
Appositives
The last case I want to talk about is something called an “appositive” in English. I didn’t actually have any idea what that meant and had never even heard of it prior to looking into this particle - so no worries if that word seems scary.
To try and summarize it, it’s the idea where you redefine a noun right after you use it. For instance, there might be a person standing next to me and I could say, “This is Kaylie”. However, you would have no idea who that is or how they relate to me. So, instead, I might say, “This is Kaylie, Lily’s elder sister”. Notice how right after I introduced the noun Kaylie, I added another noun (Lily’s elder sister)? That’s what an appositive is.
How would this get translated into Japanese, though? What order do you put things in? You might
be tempted to go the English route and stick them in the order of Kaylie + の + Lily + の + elder
sister - but that would actually mean something like, Kaylie’s Lily’s elder sister and wouldn’t
make much sense. Instead, make sure you put the “main noun” at the end of the series and build
from there. So, if we know we are going to end with Kaylie (as that’s the person I’m introducing),
we know that the sentence should end with のKaylieさんです. From there, how would we say “Lily’s
elder sister?” Well, again, elder sister is the key point there, so we’d say Lilyさんのお姉さん.
String them together and you get, こちらがLilyさんのお姉さんのKaylieさんです - which I think can
be translated as either, “This is Lily’s older sister, Kaylie” or as, “This is Kaylie, Lily’s
older sister.”
Other Important Information
- You can drop the noun after the
のin cases where it’s obvious what should go there. So if I was asking, “Whose car is this?” - someone could reply withそれがマイクラさんのです(that is Mike’s) rather thanそれがマイクラさんの車です(that is Mike’s car). - It’s really important to realize that the “main idea” is the thing to the right of the
のparticle. This is not always true in English - so this point might be especially confusing. For instance, if I asked you, “Where did you go to college?” - you might reply with something like, “I went to college in Japan”. Notice how college is the main idea and it comes before “in Japan”? Translating that directly you might be tempted to say something like,大学の日本- but that wouldn’t make any sense. College’s Japan? Japan of college? Instead, you have to say日本の大学(a college in Japan). - To continue on that thought, if you are going to say something is in a place (such as saying
Kyoto is in Japan) - you would not use the
のparticle, and, instead, would use theにparticle. I’ll write up a post on that another time. - You can string
のparticles together as much as you want. For instance, if you wanted to say, “My friend’s professor’s Japanese car” - that would be私の友達の先生の日本の車.
Concluding Thoughts
It’s crazy to me how this is only a few of the use cases for the の particle. I actually had
a lot of fun trying to wrap my head around these and find examples that made things “click” for me.
I included links to all the references I used below - so hopefully those may be of use to someone!