I think this made it click, thank you! I think I got convinced 魔界からの使者に was attached to the 愛する and not the さらう. Which I realize now is probably what the space was supposed to be implying.
Still looking at these translations, seems to me this is a great example of a sentence that crams in way more information than any sentence would in english
Can someone explain this Sentence to me?
これは わたしの すきな ほん てす。
My textbook doesn’t explain it very well. I don’t even have a translation.
The Chapter is about na-adjectives and the の Marks the topic. I thought は Marks the topic?
This
Likable to me
Book
Is
This
My
Likable book
Is
は does mark the topic. の here is marking posession.
The basic core of the sentence is これは わたしの ほん です。(not てす, to be clear) - “This is my book”. すきな now modifies ほん, to form すきな ほん - a book that I like. So, これは わたしの すきな ほん です。 = this is my book that I like. Which is mildly awkward English, but you get the drift.
Japanese to English doesn’t always have a good 1:1 word by word translation. In this case the sentence is probably translated as “this is the book I like” but there are some problems. For one thing in Japanese, there isn’t the verb is or the verb like. Like is an adjective describing book. So your sentence in a more literal translation is “this my liked book” if that sounds odd or like a word or two is missing, get used to the syntax being different. Your textbook leaving out English translations may be trying to avoid misleading translations but that might not help if you’re new. です is not the word to be or is, it indicates politeness and isn’t always needed, but in a beginner textbook you’ll see it a lot. は does indicate the topic, but it doesn’t neatly translate to is either.
I hate to walk up in here after the fact and make things more confusing, but I’m not sure this is actually right. It sounds really nice because we get to use “my” which is what we say in English, but I think the actual grammar might be no just replacing が and not possessive.
Despite being such a simple sentence honestly even I wasn’t 100% sure so I asked a couple Japanese people and both said its indeed not possessive and it’s just there to replace が as well.
So I guess kinda back to square one, I’ll try to explain it.
First, the の is just there to replace が so I’ll write it in
これは私がすきなほんです
これは - This is… (this is the topic of the sentence)
私が好き I like (actually kinda weird grammar to wrap your head around as a new learner since 好き isn’t actually the same part of speech as ‘like’ but I’m going to assume you’re familiar with it)
私が好きな〇〇 the 〇〇 that I like. な is used when we want すき to modify/describe what comes after it. Adjectives always do, like in English, it’s just that for な adjectives we need to throw in a な. It doesn’t do anything special doe.
That is how I parsed the sentence too.
これは本です that’s a book.
What kind of book
[(私の)好き]な本 book liked (by me).