‘Possessives’ are the words that indicated that someone or something ‘belongs’ to someone or something.
The nature of that ‘belonging’ depends on the context. In some cases it might be ‘ownership’ as in ‘John’s phone’. Or it could be that one thing is part of another, for example ‘The house’s roof’. It could also indicate a family relationship such as ‘My mum’ or ‘the mother cat’s kittens’. The 'possession' can also be an action; Wiremu's presentation' or a mental thing or feeling; 'The dog's thoughts', 'The happiness of the children
All of these cases use ‘possessives’ to show the relationship.
In English we often use the word ‘of’ to show possession:
The door of the house
The son of the father
The hat of Sarah
English also uses an apostrophe followed by the letter ’s’ to indicate possession. This construction is used more in modern English:
The house's door
The father's son
Sarah's hat
A third way to show possession is to use a special set of words:
My mum
Your cat
Her nephew
His pet sheep
Our feelings
Their aunty
In Māori, we have two words that perform a similar role to ‘of’. There words are ‘o’ and ‘a’.
We don’t have any equivalent to the ‘apostrpophe+s’ construction but we do have a rich set of possessive words that perform the same roles as ‘my, mine, your, yours….’
Why are their two Māori words (‘o’ and ‘a’) which do a similar job to ‘of’ in English? The answer may well blow your mind, or at least make your head a bit sore for while, it is time to look at the ‘Categories’ of possession in Te reo Māori.