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I finally got around to doing a lang-8 entry in Japanese, and somebody that corrected it left a comment; at the end was “行くんです”.
I haven’t got to Season 3 yet, but I understand that “行く” is the dictionary form, and I’m of course familiar with “です.” I’ve just never seen “です” used with a verb, and I’ve never seen a “ん” attached to it before, either. Is using “です” just another way of making verbs polite, akin to “-ます”? And then the “ん” just needs to be stuck in there or something?
Thanks!
(The whole sentence was “ドイツのどこに行くんですか？”, for context)
行くんですか is using the “のです” grammar point. Basically (for verbs) what you do is make the verb plain form and then add “のです”. However this is almost always shortened to “んです” because it’s a million times smoother.
What this does is change it to an explanation, or if its a question, you are asking for an explanation. So basically instead of asking for a simple answer, you want more details. It’s kind of like where your wife goes “Where are you going?!” Its not a simple question ,she wants some details dammit. So i.e I’m going out to visit Joe.
Its a very common spoken style, (so usually not in writing or in casual spoken style writing). You can also apply it to adjectives and nouns, and it also comes in plain form (んだ）. I don’t think Koichi has a lesson on it yet, but you can check out more details here, just go down to “Using の as an explanation”
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/nounparticles
P.s you’ll soon learn that “です” is combined with a lot of different types of statements.
Oh, okay. Thank you for the explanation! So much less confusing now.
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