"No", the Possessive Particle. It's mine all mine I tell you!!

New Vocab:
Kuruma = car
Otousan = father
Kare = he/him

Here is another easy lesson. Today we will introduce a new particle into our sentences. Remember, a particle tells us what a word is doing in a sentence. It tells us the importance of a word. Recall that the particle "wa" marked the topic of the sentence. The new particle today is "no" which marks ownership or possession. This should be easy to remember since your first word was probably "no!" as a toddler and you were probably very selfish or possessive of your toys. Okay, silly example but maybe it will help you remember its meaning. The Particle "no" is similar to the English "apostrophe s ('s). "

Like the particle "wa", "no" follows directly after the noun it is modifying.

Lets look at some examples.

Examples:

Watashi no kuruma desu. = My car.

Kare wa tomodachi no Otousan desu. = He is my friend's father.

In the above example "my" is implied in "my friend". I could have said "Kare wa Watashi no tomodachi no Otousan desu." but it seems strange since it is implied that I am talking about my friend. Having two "no" particles in this sentence seems wordy.

More examples:

Sore wa Watashi no ki dewa arimasen. = That is not my tree. (Remember the desu box from an earlier lesson!)

Tomodachi no inu wa doko desu ka? = Where is my friend's dog?

See, pretty easy! Remember to practice with other nouns.