Lesson Eight: How To Make Something Possessive

A wa B no C desu.

By adding the word no between two words it becomes possessive, relational.
In the sentence,

Kore wa Kyan no tsukue desu. (This is Cam's desk.)

you can see what has happened. No allows nouns (people) to act as a possessive adjective and is similar to the 's in English. If no is found after a noun that is a place, it denotes the place of origin of the second noun.

Sore wa Furansu no Jamu desu. (That is French Jam)

If the first noun is any other kind of noun, it will be used to describe the makeup of the second noun.

Nihongo no sensei. (A Japanese teacher)
Are wa Eigo no shimbun, ka na? (I wonder if that is an English newspaper?)

If you add no after watashi, you get "my".
Anata + no will give you "your" while kare + no = "his"
Kanojo + no = "her".
Watatashitachi no means "our".

1. Kore wa watashi no pen desu.
(This is my pen.)
2. Anata no okane desu ka?
(Is this your money?)
3. Are wa kanojo no kodomo desu.
(That is her child.)

You can use no in conjunction with dare (who), doko (where) nan (what) to make dare no (whose), doko no (from where) ,and nan no (of what) to make even more complex sentences.

1. Kore wa dare no kuruma desu ka? (Whose car is this?)
- Watashi no. (Mine).
2. Anata wa doko no hito desu ka? (Where are you from?)
- Boku wa Doitsujin desu. (I am German.)
3. Yamada-san wa nan no sensei desu ka? (What kind of teacher is she?)
- Rika no sensei desu. (She is a Social Studies teacher.)

You are probably getting the hang of it now, right?

- Sensei

Next Lesson: Lesson Nine - Some vocabulary