を vs の?

When should I use them for example, my Dog. They both apparently mean of.

5 comments
  1. を does not mean “of”. It is the object particle, the word before it is the object of the sentence, being acted upon.

    Edit: for this you’d use の

  2. を is an object marker, for example in the sentence:

    リンゴを食べている — I am eating an apple.

    の on the other hand is a possessive particle:

    これは私のリンゴです — This is my apple.

  3. They’re extremely different particles. [を](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese-grammar/particle-wo/) tells us about actions happening to an object.

    [の](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese-grammar/particle-no-noun-modifier/) is pretty close to what you said. One of its functions tells you something belongs to something/in a class of something. It does a whole bunch of other things too but don’t worry about those yet, just know that in your example, you’d use の when you want to let someone know that your dog is yours. 「QuibyYT の いぬ。」

    [Here’s a cheat sheet with the basic of basics when it comes to particles. ](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/japanese-particles-cheatsheet/)

  4. It’s really easy to misunderstand what particles do if you rely on English translations. Translations are imperfect and oftentimes completely misleading.

    If you want to master particles, you really need to study some grammar and tackle each of them in turn until you can really wrap your head around them.

    を tends to mark a direct object. A thing that’s being affected by an action. Now, there are complexities beyond that, but generally speaking you can think of it that way. So “my dog” would not use を, but if you want to say “I threw a ball”, then you could use を to mark the ball as a thing you did the action of throwing to.

    の is a much more complicated particle. Mostly because it has a fairly consistent function, but a lot of nuances to its use, which can confuse new learners. But very often it functions as a simple possessive particle. An English ” ‘s ” if you wish. And if you want to say “my dog”, this is what you’d use:

    私の犬です – “I’s dog” = “My dog”

    I guess if you wanted to use “of”, you could think of it as: “Dog of I” = “Dog belonging to I”

  5. I guess to put everyone’s answers in more linguistic terms, both を and の are “case” particles (they change the case/declension of the noun).

    を is the [direct] object marker. It says what the verb acts on. Other languages would know it as the accusative case.

    の is the possessive marker, known as the genitive case in other languages. It usually says that object A possesses object B, like in あなた (you) の (changes “you” to “your”) 名前 (name). It also connects nouns to nouns (友達のジョン, my friend John) as well as certain adjective-like nouns to nouns (茶色のクマ, brown bear).

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