On Mon, 17 Jun 1996, Peter L. Ward wrote:

Actually, there are many uses of that syllable.  The book I'm studying from 
counts at least eight.  Some of them are...

- particle that shows possession (the "of" translation from above)

And note that this doesn't quite mean 'of' - it's more like apostrophe-s, 
as in 'Genma is Ranma's father' - 'Genma wa Ranma no otousan desu.'

Thing is, with this usage, it would seem that "desu/da" would be needed as well 
(i.e. "Ranma no baka da!").  OTOH, this type of phrase does seem to fall into 
the category of slang, so maybe we're all nitpicking a bit too much about 
this...

Sometims, in very casual speech, 'da' is left out, just for convenience's 
sake.  As you said, it's slang.

--
Scott Johnson |
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