Quick Question: Newbie Lesson #4 - Long Distance Skype III

[djkaveman]

Quick question to anyone out there..

I’m a total newbie, and just finished listening to 'Newbie Lesson #4 - Long Distance Skype III'.. There was one sentence I heard in which i didn’t quite understand the structure.. The girl was introducing her friend and said :

kochira-wa kako-no tomodachi-no Jenny des
=
In this direction, school’s friend’s jenny.

What i don’t understand is why there should be a ‘no’ at the end of ‘tomodachi’. I get why there’s a ‘no’ at the end of ‘Kako’, because the friend is from school. So its the possessive. But ‘Jenny’ does not belong to ‘tomodachi’. So could someone tell me why there’s a ‘no’ at the end of ‘tomodachi’?

Would appreciate anyone’s insight, and would request that any explanations be in ‘romaji’, since i’m illiterate in japanese.

Thanks

[QuackingShoe]

It's likely 'kochira wa gakkou (or koukou, I haven't heard the lesson) no tomodachi no Jenny desu'.

The answer is that 'no' isn't actually possessive per se, that's a bit of a simplification (or over-complication, depending on the angle you're looking at it from). It's really just a particle that allows you to use one noun to describe another noun. So in the same way that in 'aoi kuruma,' 'aoi' is telling us something about 'kuruma,' in 'tomodachi no jenny,' 'tomodachi' is telling us something about 'jenny.' What this works out to in English is entirely dependent on what you're talking about, but in Japanese it's irrelevant. In this case, Jenny, a friend from school.

It's best not to attempt literal translations into English. Because there's no such thing.

Good luck!