'Koto' - making verbs into nouns

Learn about Japanese Particles

A useful word - "koto"

Koto literally means "thing" in an abstract sense, as in "what kind of things to you do at those meetings." It's not the kind of thing you can touch, hold or spit on. In many cases, you can change a verb into a noun phrase by adding koto to it. We'll just look at one use of it in this lesson.

Take a typical short sentence:

Sushi o taberu.
Eat sushi.

If we add "koto", it allows us to use the phrase as the subject of a larger sentence.

Sushi o taberu koto
The act of eating sushi

If we place a koto noun phrase before ga dekiru, we get a nifty way of saying "can do..."

Watashi wa sushi o taberu koto ga dekiru.
I can eat sushi.

Sushi o taberu koto ga dekiru ka.
Can you/he/... eat sushi?

Now, if you're really observant, you might be saying, "hey! that first sentence has two subjects," or "why would 'sushi eating' be performing the action in the second sentence?" Here's your answer. Dekiru literally is closer to "is doable" than to "can do..." So the wa in the first sentence doesn't mark the subject at all; it just shows which topic we're discussing ("I" in this case).

Watashi wa sushi o taberu koto ga dekiru.
[As for me, sushi eating is doable.]


This article was used with permission from:
Japanese is Possible
Source: elanguageschool.net