これは冷やして食べるものなのですか
I did some searching but nothing seemed to quite explain what I'm looking for.
I'm assuming the second の is the explanatory の, but what is ものな? Are the もの and な separate? They feel that way to me.
Thanks.
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1 Answer
If it had been written as:
これは冷やして食べるものだ
would it have made sense to you?
これは冷やして食べるものだ
means "this is something to eat cold." But generally, Japanese is pretty explicit about how information is being conveyed in a way which is alien to English. When giving an explanation or asking for clarification the Japanese will indicate this by tacking
のです
to the end. Here the speaker is asking for clarification, so
のですか
is tacked onto the end.
However, "の" is a nominalizer which means before it だ needs to be changed to な
これは冷やして食べるものだ + のですか
becomes
これは冷やして食べるものなのですか
Which in English just translates to "Is this something something to eat cold?" In English, the nuance of のですか is completely lost.
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Thanks. I think my confusion is coming from the fact that my understanding of the meaning of the sentence was "is this usually eaten cold?" I didn't realize "something" was involved and was trying to figure out what a V+もの construction did. So it's really just "something that gets eaten" plus and explanatory "の"? Commented Sep 9, 2020 at 23:17
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Could you please link me something about this rule? "However, "の" is a nominalizer which means before it だ needs to be changed to な" Commented Sep 9, 2020 at 23:19
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1@charlemagne In your sentence, もの before なのだ is just "(some)thing", and 食べるもの is more like "something which one eats" rather than "something that gets eaten", since there is no passive verb. 冷やして食べるもの is literally "something which one refrigerates and (then) eats", thus "something to eat cold". A very literal translation would be "Is it that this is something which one refrigerates and (then) eats?"– narutoCommented Sep 9, 2020 at 23:35
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