日本語
How do you say in Japanese?
Results for of

Japanese has a "reverse-of" called の that glues to the end of the target word. For example, 「AmericaのPersonだ。」 means "is a Person of America." This necessitates a switch in word sequence, "is Joan of Ark" becomes 「ArkのJoanだ。」. This particle 「の」 is the most frequently occurring glyph in the Japanese language, and has several uses, including the noun-ification of verbs ("nominalization") and the ability to act like infinite nesting Marushka Dolls, for example「SelfのHouseのBedroomのBookshelfのColorだ。」"It is the color of the bookshelf of the bedroom of the house of self/me." As you can see, the word-order is flipped into perfect reverse, and this is because の delineates specificity, ownership, sub-categorization, while "of" depicts the opposite relationship or travel in the opposite direction: "of" points to larger and wider containers zooming out, の indicates smaller and more specific containment zooming in.

Login
Get an intuition for Japanese that will stick with you for life with Japanese Complete.