the particle *no* uhh

[kokoro505]

I have question that has been bugging me for some time lately. ok, the example the book gave me was

:A! yotsuba no kuroba.~oh A four-leaf clover! (example 1) modifying *no particle*

Koun no shirushi da.~ Its a sign of good luck (example 2) Of *no particle*


ok so my question is does it matter if you say Kuroba no yotsuba, or shirushi no koun? By switching them will it still sound grammatical?

[squarezebra]

yotsuba no kuroba （四葉のクローバ）= a 4 leaf clover (brings good luck etc etc - emphasis on the whole clover)
kuroba no yotsuba(クローバの四葉) = the 4 leaves of the clover (fell off/turned blue etc etc - emphasis on the 4 leaves)

koun no shirushi幸運の印 = sign of good luck
shirushi no koun (印の幸運) doesn't really make any sense since there isn't anything lucky about a sign.

The basic rule, correct me if im wrong, is that what comes first modifies what comes next. By swapping these around you can maintain grammatical correctness, but the meaning will be completely different.

[micahcowan]

yotsuba no kuroba （四葉のクローバ）= a 4 leaf clover (brings good luck etc etc - emphasis on the whole clover)[/quote

Hahah, until you wrote it out with the long vowel in katakana (so in romaji, really kurōba or kuro-ba), I didn't make connection between it and the English word "clover", and was wondering whether the Japanese for clover was bizarrely 黒葉

shirushi no koun (印の幸運) doesn't really make any sense since there isn't anything lucky about a sign.

Hm, let's see...

あの印 俺の皮に書いてから、　すぐ５万円もらった。　印の幸運からだろうね

笑

[squarezebra]

I see what you did there Micahcowan 笑
Context is everything!

[Ranja]

あの印 俺の皮に書いてから、　すぐ５万円もらった。　印の幸運からだろうね

I see your point, but still 印の幸運 doesn't make much sense.
It should be 印の持つ幸運(sirusi no motsu kouun) or 印がもたらした幸運, etc.

あの印 私の腕につけたあと、すぐ500万円手に入れました。印の呼ぶ幸運のせいかしら。

[SomeCallMeChris]

For the original question and anyone else having fundamental problems with 　の, the way I first remembered how to hold the order and what it meant is to think of it as a 'backwards "of"' ...
桜の木　a tree of cherries
東京の人　person/people of tokyo
This gives slightly awkward literal translations for most cases that can still be understood on your way to natural English if you're translating or until you get a good enough feel of the particle to not need the English if you're just reading.

The 'possessive no' then isn't really a different case at all, although it does make for slightly broken English that isn't correct.
僕の本　book of me (mine)
太郎くんの本　book of Taro (Taro's ; although, depending on context, it could also be a book of Taro as in a book -about- Taro).

Anyway, it's a silly trick that you'll soon outgrow, and it isn't quite perfect, but it gets the vast majority of cases into something comprehensible with consistent ordering (as opposed to trying to understand 'no' as -sometimes- being apostrophe-s and -sometimes- being the other direction and meaning something else... ick, recipe for confusion that.)　And if you think of it this way, you can also see how some things -can- appear on either side of の、 but just like switching sides of 'of' in English, you'd completely change the meaning even if the result was grammatical.

[Retsubty]

Another way to think of it is,

NO works like 's in english but not how we use it.
modifying forwards modifying backwards
Koun no Shirushi Luck's Sign (Sign of Luck)
Sekai no Owari World's End (End of World)
Owari no Hajimari End's Beginning (Beginning of End)
Ie no Kagi House's Key (Key of House)