I see, that makes a lot more sense now. I have never studied Japanese but I've picked up a bit from watching so much anime. lol. One thing though... Isn't it B that possesses A?(e.g. A no(owned by) B) Like Hajime no Ippo translated as 'The First Step,' or the less friendly version, Beginning of Step(s). Hajime meaning Beginning and Ippo meaning Step. Using the same outline Yume no Okami would be Dream of God or God's Dream. Or like you just taught me, God Dream.
No When no is used as a possessive, A owns B. So in this case: Yume owns Okami. So it's Dream's God, or God of Dream. However, when used as a modifier, A modifies B, so in this case Yume modifies Okami, so it becomes Dream God. (not God Dream.) And as for Hajime no Ippo: possessive = Hajime owns Ippo = First owns Step. However that doesn't really make any sense, at least translation wise. As a modifier though, it becomes: Hajime modifies Ippo, so the translation becomes: First Step, or as you wrote The First Step. Anyways, I think that the main lesson is that you can remove everything before the no and still have the essential information about what you're talking about. So in the case of Yume no Okami, Okami is what's important, or the main element we're talking about, regardless of whether it's owned by someone or if something before it modifies it. So whether it's the Dream God, or Rain God, or Fire God, isn't really that important, what's important is that we're talking about a God. Same with Hajime no Ippo, Step is the main element, so whether it's the first, second, or last step, is not really that important.
Well thanks for the informative lesson. So the way you are using the O in Okami seems a little similar but is different than -Kun -Chan -Sama - San etc. Right?
[edited, misread your question] I think the only difference is that -san, -sama, -chan, -kun is added to names or titles, while "o" is added to normal words. You can even put "go" in front of some words just as "o". However, I think "go" is used more on words with Chinese origin. In the historical comedy anime, "Oh! Edo Rocket", the main character even puts an "o" in front of some of the other character's names + san. So dunno if that was just a joke, or if it was common in the past to even put "o" in front of names. There seems to be no end to the Japanese decorating their words. For example, "to eat" is "taberu" in the informal way of saying it, but if you want to be polite you say, "tabemasu", and this works on all verbs! Luckily, there's some rules to how you add the "-masu" to the verb(so you don't have to memorize two words for every verb), but it's not always clear which rule applies. Also, since we've had all this talk about the no particle, I've looked into it a bit more than what my beginner Japanese websites are telling me. And the no particle can actually show the relationship between the two nouns in several ways, such as: ownership, affiliation, whereabouts, place of action, when, material, name, volume and order, subject, goal, metaphor, and a few more... So it's not as straightforward as it seems. And it gets even more complicated as Japanese is a very context driven language, so a lot of times you will probably not know exactly what that relationship is, unless you know the context, except that there is some sort of relationship between the two. Anyways, I'm still a beginner, so don't take anything I've said as stone-cold facts
