の

の marks possession and relationships between nouns. It works like the English apostrophe-s or the word 'of'. The possessor noun comes before の, and the thing possessed comes after. It can express ownership, belonging, or a close relationship (e.g., family, part-whole, or category). It is used in everyday speech and in simple written Japanese. Note that の can also connect two nouns to form a compound noun phrase (N1 の N2), where N1 describes or specifies N2.