The rule
The owner comes right after the thing owned. Nothing is added.
| Amadunia | English |
|---|---|
| ruma mi | my house |
| nama yu | your name |
| anak ta | her child, his child |
| rafiki kita | our friend |
| ruma rafiki | the friend’s house |
| nama anak | the child’s name |
No possessive pronouns to learn (my, your, his), no suffix, no “of”. The ordinary pronoun does the job, and so does any ordinary noun.
Where it sits
The owner takes the slot immediately after the noun — the same slot an adjective takes. When both are present, the owner comes first, then the adjective:
| Amadunia | English |
|---|---|
| ruma mi kabir | my big house |
| anak ta keci | her small child |
| rafiki kita hao | our good friend |
ruma mi is a unit: “my house”. Whatever follows describes that unit.
Chains
An owner can itself have an owner. Each one follows what it owns, and the chain can go as long as it needs to:
| Amadunia | English |
|---|---|
| ruma rafiki mi | my friend’s house — house (of) friend (of) me |
| nama anak rafiki yu | your friend’s child’s name |
Read left to right, each word belongs to the one before it. No exception at any depth.
In a sentence
| Amadunia | English |
|---|---|
| Mi kan ruma yu. | I see your house. |
| Anak ta suda nomu akua. | Her child drank water. |
| Rafiki mi saufa lai. | My friend will come. |
| Kita bil nama doktor. | We know the doctor’s name. |
Sources
Placing the owner straight after the noun, with no marker, is how a large share of the world already does it:
| Family | Example |
|---|---|
| Austronesian | Indonesian/Malay rumah saya (house I), nama dia (name he) |
| Semitic | Arabic bayt-u r-rajul (house the-man), Hebrew construct state |
| Iranian | Persian khāne-ye man (house-of me) — with a linking vowel, same order |
| Niger-Congo | Swahili nyumba yangu (house my) — owner after noun |
| Celtic | Welsh tŷ Siôn (house John), Irish |
| Tai-Kadai, Austroasiatic | Thai bâan khǎw (house he), Vietnamese nhà tôi (house I) |
| Romance | la casa de Juan — noun first, with de |
It also matches what Amadunia already does with adjectives: modifiers follow the noun.
Why this and not the alternatives
Why no marker. Every marker candidate with real reach collides with a word already settled: Chinese de 的 is a minimal pair with des (10); Japanese no の is already “no”; Swahili ya is already “yes”. That three independent candidates all collide is a sign the language does not want a marker here — and juxtaposition needs none.
Why owner before adjective. The owner is the most identifying information (“whose house”); adjectives describe. Arabic and Indonesian, the two largest noun-first models, both bind the owner tighter to the noun than the adjective.
Why not separate possessive pronouns (my, your). A second pronoun set doubles what a learner must memorise and, in every language that has one, drifts away from the base set (English I/my, Spanish yo/mi). Reusing the ordinary pronoun means there is nothing extra to learn and nothing that can drift.
Candidates rejected, and why:
| Candidate | Source | Reason rejected |
|---|---|---|
| de (particle) | Chinese de 的, Romance de | minimal pair with des (10) |
| no (particle) | Japanese no の | already “no” |
| ya (particle) | Swahili -a class agreement | already “yes” |
| -im / -in (suffix) | Turkish, Hungarian, Arabic | inflection on the noun — against the spirit of rule 3 |
| owner first (mi ruma) | Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, Hindi, English | would be the only modifier placed before the noun — one exception to an otherwise clean pattern |
Open questions
Attributive vs predicate— settled in copula.md: a noun predicate takes es (rafiki mi es doktor), which keeps it apart from possession (rafiki mi doktor = my friend’s doctor); adjectives take nothing.- Alienable vs inalienable. Some languages distinguish “my hand” from “my house”. Amadunia currently does not; whether it ever should is open.