Japanese
The Japanese possessive is constructed by using the suffix -no 〜の to make the genitive case. For example:
- Nominative: 猫 neko ('cat'); 手 te ('hand, paw')
- Genitive: 猫の手 neko-no te ('cat's paw')
It also uses the suffix -na 〜な for adjectival noun; in some analyses adjectival nouns are simply nouns that take -na in the genitive, forming a complementary distribution (-no and -na being allomorphs).
Read more about this topic: Genitive Case
Famous quotes containing the word japanese:
“A pragmatic race, the Japanese appear to have decided long ago that the only reason for drinking alcohol is to become intoxicated and therefore drink only when they wish to be drunk.
So I went out into the night and the neon and let the crowd pull me along, walking blind, willing myself to be just a segment of that mass organism, just one more drifting chip of consciousness under the geodesics.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“I am a lantern—
My head a moon
Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin
Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.”
—Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)
“The Japanese do not fear God. They only fear bombs.”
—Jerome Cady, U.S. screenwriter. Lewis Milestone. Yin Chu Ling, The Purple Heart (1944)