Thursday, June 4, 2009

Of The Words "No", "Of", and "Punya"

If you're familiar with Japanese sentence structure you'll probably know (and if you didn't, you will now) that the adjective comes before the noun with the use of the possessive particle no. Let's use my favourite example: mahou no kotoba or "magic words". Mahou is the adjective "magic" while kotoba is the noun "words". Now, let's work with the understanding that the possessive particle no is used the same way we would use the word "of". When I first started learning Japanese I wondered "Exactly what is the logic of using a possessive in describing something?" Then one day I realized that we've been doing the exact same thing in English. Haven't you often heard people utter "words of magic" or "words of love", or even refer to "this hat of mine" or "this pearl of yours"? Sure, it's backward (and of a completely different meaning) if you were to translate it directly as "magic of words" but the rule still applies.
Ironically enough, speakers of Malay may find this easier to relate to despite the fact that Malay sentence structure places the adjective after the noun. We'll use the example orang gila or "crazy person". Orang is the noun "person" while gila is the adjective "crazy". Unfortunately, this cannot be rewritten according to English sentence structure as "person of crazy". It can, however, be rephrased as gila punya orang, with the possessive punya.
I now have a theory that this particular form of Malay sentence structure is in fact an adaptation of Japanese sentence structure. What do you think?

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