possession in casual speech

2 comments

1. There is no difference between spoken and written Japanese with regards to the possessive の.

   >What about in cases such as “私は私の…” where 私 is restated?

   That sentence construction doesn’t really happen, but no, there is no difference. In English, possession is usually marked by ‘s but in the case of you or I, it becomes your or my. This doesn’t happen in Japanese. It still would be 私の. In English, you would say “I rode my bike.” If you would take a one-to-one literal translation of this in Japanese, it would be “私は私の自転車に乗りました。(I my-bike rode.)”. Except that nobody would ever say or write it like that. You would just say 自転車に乗りました。

2. There are in fact instances where you might see が used instead of の, but only really in literary, poetic, or archaic instances. For example,「鶴ヶ丘」 (つるがおか) lit. “The hill of crane(s)”

   This comes from the fact that in older Japanese, が was used to indicate possession, rather than の, but language change and evolve.

   That’s not to say が is _never_ used in modern speech, however, as it occurs (somewhat infrequently, as it’s still considered old-fashioned) in fixed phrases such as 我が家 (わがや), “my home”.