Of course it is!

Well, I'm afraid it's been a year since the last lesson. I have to say that I've been working on other things in the last year and neglecting this website. But in the end, even though I'm quite busy, I've decided to come back and work on this in the background.

Today's lesson will be quite short, but I'm going to try something a bit different that I hope you will enjoy. So let's get to it.

そうなのよ(yo)！

This sentence is interesting because the meaning of the sentence is completely carried by only the first word. The rest of the sentence only carries emotion and context. So, let's start with that first word. You already know it; it's そう. We can have a complete sentence in Japanese with this word and it means "it is so".

The next part of the sentence might seem a little bit strange, but have a look at the の two characters away. This is the same thing that we ran into on day 7, with 知(し)らなかったんだ. If you remember, the ん was short for の and you can say 知(し)らなかったの which would mean "I/You didn't know" in an explanatory way.

The way it works is that putting の after a verb makes the whole thing a noun, and we are essentially saying "The thing of me not knowing, is". Whether or not you finish the sentence with だ or not, depends on how rough you want to sound -- males will usually do so, while females usually won't. Since the last word in a sentence is usually a verb, you can simply put の at the end of the sentence to to make the sentence an explanation.

Here's a different example: 僕(ぼく)が来(き)た. That means, "I came". You can stick の at the end and it means exactly the same thing, except that no it is an explanation. Possibly, I might ask you, "Why are you here?" The answer might be 僕(ぼく)が来(き)たの or "I came."

One thing that's a little confusing is that using の in this fashion is different than saying "because" in English. The "because" part of the sentence is the reason for something that has been stated. "I went to the store because I needed groceries". の puts the sentence in explanation mode, but the situation responsible for the explanation might not be stated. So for example, perhaps you are looking at a strange hat I'm wearing, but say nothing about it. In English, I might say, "I'm going to a costume party" as an explanation for the hat. But it would be a bit strange to say "Because I'm going to a costume party", when nothing else has been said.

There is one more thing I want to say about の for explanations before I move on. If you end a sentence with の and raise your intonation like a question, it becomes a question requesting an explanation. For example: 知(し)らなかったの? would mean mean "You didn't know?" in a way that requests more than a yes or no answer. You can tell the difference between an explanatory sentence and a question requesting an explanation in manga by the presence of a question mark at the end.

In any case, our sentence so far is そう and we want to put it in explanation mode. In other words, we are saying "it is so" but we want to imply that we're saying this based on something the other person should be able to observe (either in the coversation so far, or something else). You might think that you should just be able to say そうの, but you'd be wrong. そう is a noun and we can't use の in this way with nouns, only verbs. So we insert a verb meaning "is" in between: そうなの.

You would be justified in wondering what verb な is. Well, it's really a form of ある, "to be". If you remember from your reading, you can either say そう or そうだ. The だ in this case is a contraction of the phrase である. In fact そうだ pretty much means "It is so, it is", which is why it sounds rough and assertive. な on the other hand is a contraction of にある. It essentially means the same thing as だ, but there are historical grammatical reasons why we must use it in the middle of a sentence.

な shows up quite a lot in Japanese grammar where you need to get a noun into a verb (or adverbial) form. In modern Japanese, it has no real meaning. It's just something we have to remember to stick in. In this case, we want to put the sentence into explanation mode with の. But の only works this way on verbs. So we turn our noun そう into a verb by placing な after it and we get そうなの which means "It is so", in an explanation way. If we wanted to be very pedantic we might say that it says, "The thing is, it is so it is". If we want to be extra assertive we can even add だ on the end and say そうなのだ (or contracted そうなんだ).

As usual, I'm belabouring the point and turning a small sentence into a large lesson. But this sentence is actually very popular, and quite useful. I hope you can see the difference between そう (or そうだ) and そうなの (or そうなんだ). In the first case you are simply asserting it is true. In the second you are asserting it is true and implying that it's in explanation of something. Perhaps you have had a discussion about something that confused you. Finally, you understand everything -- そうなんだ！

Now, before it gets too late, let's look at the last character, よ(yo). I believe this is the first time we've seen this character. At the end of a sentence it simply means that the person is saying something that they think the other person doesn't know. In English we can often use the pharse "you know" in a similar fashion. "It's your turn to do the dishes, you know!".

Now, if you can think back to the last lesson, what was happening? One person said, そんなことを言(い)っていた 気(き)も(mo), or "I think she might have said something like that". Now we have the response: そうなのよ(yo)！ In English: "It is so, you know!" in explanation mode.

The explanation mode here is important to the feeling of the sentence. The person is explaining something. Why are they explaining? Because there has been some evidence to show this is true, but the other person hasn't been paying attention. In this context, I feel the person is saying, "Of course she did!", where in English we use "of course" to imply that the person should know better.

Only one character to learn. Even though it's a small lesson, we are actually running out of characters. Keep working hard!

As it turns out, there's no new vocabulary to learn today!

Here I'm going to get you to practice the various forms of this useful expression. When you are memorizing it, please try to think of the difference in feeling in each one of the forms. There are quite a few forms here. If you can make these exressions second nature, you will have a big leg up on more complicated structures.

One useful tip: You can't use だ at the end of a sentence if it's a question, even if you're male.

Today's Mnemosyne file.

Today your reading is for today is subordinate clauses. Please read it carefully. For me, this was the biggest change in thinking I had to do in order to start understanding Japanese. We will see lots of examples in the manga.