Cheers,
I'm teaching myself the language for a while now and I'm picking up on basic grammar structure. Combined with a dictionary, I can occasionally even make sense of a sentence!
But the full meaning of this one eludes me (as well as Google Translate and Bing Translator). It's a review of a game I worked on:
ゾンビを潰していくのは単純に楽しい。
It doesn't seem to be an error, even to a beginner.
From what I can tell, with help of Google Translate and OS X Japanese-English dictionary, the components seem to be:
- ゾンビ - zombie
- を - object marker
- 潰して - 'te' form of crush (Google Translate), destroy (Bing Translator), fit for (?!) (OS X dictionary)
- いく - to go; "going to"
- のは - I have no idea what this is; it seems to be composed of possessive "no" and as-for-# subject marker "wa"
- 単純 - simplicity
- に - location marker (here, in?)
- 楽しい - enjoyable
So it seems to be a positive review; it seems to say "You will crush zombies [のは] (which is?) enjoyable in simplicity."
What does のは above mean? What nuance am I missing?
Answer
Interesting choice of beginner's literature.
の is not the possessive, but a nominalizer, i.e. it can make a verb (潰していく) into a noun (潰していくの), which you can then use as the topic of the sentence (using は). The analogous construction in English would be the gerund, i.e. to crush → crushing.
Also, に is not the location marker, but turns the na-adjective 単純 into an adverb.
Summarizing, we have
ゾンビを潰していくのは単純に楽しい。
Crushing zombies is simply enjoyable.
Watch out for particles that have multiple uses (の and に being the worst cases).
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