のは? What does this mean?

笹を食べながらのんびりするのは最高だなぁ

I don’t understand what the function of the の before は is here. Can anyone explain? Thanks! :blush:

2 Likes

It makes what comes before it, in this case that whole phrase, into a noun. Then the は is marking that noun as the topic.

16 Likes

Well said.

I was honestly going to say の is a possessive and は is a topic marker.

in bunpro for の they say Noun + + Noun so it kind of makes sense that what comes before の is a noun. And as は is a topic marker, it’s marking that noun as a topic.

With that said, I probably wouldn’t have assumed that it made the whole prase into a noun as Leebo said.

On bunpro for のは it says Structure that a verb comes before のは so I would assume you use のは when you want to convert that verb to a noun? I’m not sure :smiley: but Leebo answered your question anyway.

This is a different の. This の is a placeholder noun itself. It’s not really all that different from something like こと, where it can be modified by a relative clause to make a noun phrase. It’s different in its meaning and usage, to a certain extent, but they are both basically placeholder nouns that can make noun phrases.

It doesn’t have to be a verb, it could be an adjective as well. I mean, maybe they meant some particular nuance of のは when they said that, but anyway.

5 Likes

You can also see のが like in

笹を食べながらのんびりするのが大好きだ。

And the idea is the same as Leebo explained, the の is making everything the comes before into a noun.

Somewhat unrelated suggestion: for particle questions, the “All About Particles” book is a very nice reference to have.

Imagine this thought pattern:
This is the best”

Now imagine,
This = Eating bamboo while relaxing.

1 Like

Actually, I think it could be a noun as well, right? Just that it would be the possessive の again. Like Aのは would be ‘the one belonging to A (is something, does something etc)’ if A were a person, for example.

I completely agree with Leebo that it’s a different type of の, but I’d just like to suggest that they’re not completely separate. If you take the ‘Nounの’ placeholder usage above, you’ll realise that it’s sort of ‘natural’ for の to be a placeholder for other sorts of words, or at least, that it’s a particle that already has a precedent for having that sort of function. I don’t know if there’s some kind of common logic behind it, but we do the same in Chinese with 的, which is the equivalent of の as a particle in Chinese. The difference is that adjectives, verbs and nouns that modify other nouns almost always attach with 的 in Chinese, so it’s not like Japanese where we ‘add something extra’ to turn the phrase into a noun: we just drop the noun and let it be implied.

This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.