ようこそ！Anime fans and Japanese learners!
Today, we are going to explore the concept of nominalisation in Japanese by focusing on an iconic phrase from ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 (JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure)!
Nominalisation – treating a verb like a noun
Firstly, what is nominalisation? Nominalisations are nouns which are created by verbs (and sometimes by adjectives). For example, ‘argument’ is a nominalisation of the verb ‘to argue’. In Japanese, some sentence patterns require you to use nominalised verbs, instead of verbs themselves.
Today’s phrase
First phrase we are going to focus on is this one.
「君が泣くまで殴るのをやめないッ！」
kimi ga naku made naguru no o yame nai!
I won’t stop punching you until you cry
Let’s break down the vocabulary of this phrase.
Vocabulary：
君（きみ）: you
が: subject particle
泣く: cry
まで: until
殴るの: Nominalization of 殴る / 殴ります (to punch)
を: object marker
やめない: not stop / won’t stop
ッ: Araki sensei (JoJo’s author) seems to love adding this at the end of every character’s speech
Here, 殴るのis nominalization of 殴る / 殴ります (to punch). When you say 「〜をやめない / やめません」you are going to need a noun to fill the gap. It would be incorrect to say 殴るをやめない or 殴りますをやめません.
When you nominalise a verb, you follow the patterns below
Change the verb into the dictionary form (plain form)
Add either の or こと
Examples
殴ります (masu form / polite form) → 殴る (Dictionary form / plain form) → 殴るの
You can use this phrase when you talk to your JoJo friends by swapping the verbs in it like this:
「君が Verb まで、Nominalisation をやめないッ！」
みなさん、わかりましたか？See if you can make a variation of this phrase.
君がべんきょうするまで、おしえるのをやめない！
じゃ、さようなら！
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