Attributing One Noun To Another
“There is nothing on earth you cannot have – once you have mentally accepted the fact that you can have it.” - Robert Collier
Even though we’ve been using the particle の for basic “possession,” it can also be used to attribute one noun to another (really, it’s kind of the same thing). For example, do you remember this video from an earlier chapter? I put it there to let you take a break, but we’re going to be looking at the title of it now. You can see the title in the first 5 seconds:
The title is written in kanji, but if we listen, we can hear that it is もり の あんどう. Let’s break this up a bit.
もり ＝ forest
の ＝ の particle
あんどう ＝ Ando (name)
This is a great example how to attribute one noun to another. If we look at the subtitle in this video, it says “Mr. Ando of the Woods,” which is spot on. Remember how we used の with someone’s name to make it possessive? Joeyの = Joey’s. Bobbyの = Bobby’s. It’s kind of like that, except we’re not doing it with a name or person, we’re doing it to a thing.
First, let’s take a look at the “clean” translation, not the literal one.
もり の あんどう ＝ Mr. Ando of the Woods
This one is great and all (and sounds nice!), but the literal translation will help you understand how this grammar point actually works.
もり の あんどう ＝ Woods’ Mr. Ando
They’re both essentially the same thing, except in the second one, the “Woods” are possessing “Mr. Ando.” To hit this point home, let’s take a look at the same sentence, but flipped!
あんどう の もり ＝ Mr. Ando’s Woods
もり の あんどう ＝ Mr. Ando of the Woods / Woods’ Mr. Ando
Make sure you don’t flip flop the nouns, otherwise you’ll find yourself in trouble! Let’s practice a bit. Let’s take a look at a few more examples:
にほん の くるま です
It is a car of Japan. i.e. “Japanese Car”
こうえん (park) の き (tree) です 。
It is a tree of the park. i.e. “Park’s Tree(s)”
らーめん (ramen) の にく (meat) です。
It is meat of the ramen. i.e. “Ramen’s meat”
Feeling things like this out might take some getting used to, especially since everything is flip flopped when compared to English. If you really go through things slowly, and really think about it, though, it does actually make a lot of sense. Just read things out literally, and you’ll be fine. To practice this more, we’re going to expand on what you’ve just learned by adding これ, それ, and あれ. Once you add those in, you’ve pretty much integrated everything you’ve learned into this one grammar point!