の vs こと

Japanese
#1

I often try to read the example sentences on bunpro within grammar points or reviews and ask myself “If I was to make this sentence myself in Japanese how would I go about it” as a test for myself to compare it to the actual Japanese sentence written on here, and I feel it usually helps me learn where I am messing up.

I came across this sentence この店は美味しいということをよく聞きます - “I often hear that this restaurant is delicious”.

When I read the English and did my make believe test in my head I wanted to say it as この店は美味しいのはよく聞きます。

Am I wrong to rephrase it like that compared to the original on here? And if so what would you say the reason is? I have done a bit of looking into it and it seems の vs こと is a pretty discussed topic, but a lot of the time is just sort of a kick the can down the road sort of problem and learners are told to come back to it later or learn from experience. I would be interested in any tips or viewpoints you all have on the differences between them and when each are more natural than the other.

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#2

Short answer: こと represents an abstraction of the idea being nominalized, while の simply states something as it is. In a metaphorical sense, の is like a single picture, but こと is like an album of similar photos representing an idea. Here’s a good explanation on the key differences between the two which I ended up watching to kind of get a better understanding to answer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRPAzofwXdg

To elaborate, let’s take 食べるのが好きです as an example. Here you’re simply saying, “I like to eat” and nothing else. That’s all there is to it. But, say you have a strong passion for food, you like most or all food types, like eating out, etc. (anything related to eating really) you can express this with こと. Thinking back to the album analogy, when you use こと it’s like you’re showing the person a bunch of pictures that are related to eating and each picture represents a different thing you like in relation to eating.

So back to the original sentence, let’s re-use the album analogy again. From the album, we take out この店は美味しいという. If we were to put 美味しい back, what else might we find? A good atmosphere? Nice employees? こと here is being used to show that this shop has a good reputation (this is what the speaker hears). In fact, this sentence could be localized to English as “I often hear a lot of good things about this restaurant”.

Hopefully that somewhat helps!

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#3

Hey, thank you for the answer, I appreciate it a lot, I have gone over your answer and the video you linked and it was quite helpful.

However I can’t claim that I 100% get it yet. There are a few things that confuse me, like here https://youtu.be/ZRPAzofwXdg?t=557 They claim that verbs 見る and 手伝う are to be used with の as they are responding to a specific instance. But why is that the case? Why can’t you say “I want to help end homelessness” wouldn’t this sentence be こと considering its an album, ending homelessness isn’t a specific instance, it’s an abstract thing that has an album right? So wouldn’t this be a case where you would use 手伝う but yet こと as well?

I also struggle a bit with the ones where they can both be used. Like with 食べるのは好き vs 食べることが好き I don’t really see how they both just aren’t saying “I like to eat” or more literally “The thing of eating is pleasing” I don’t really see what the purpose would be of the two different ways of saying it. Could you provide me an example sentence where they would have different purposes? I can’t seem to wrap my head around it.

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#4

Sometimes you can use both and it really doesn’t matter which one you use but there are specific rules that say when you should use specifically either**「こと」or「の」**:
See point 3:
https://www.jpf.go.jp/j/project/japanese/teach/tsushin/grammar/201112.html

#5

Read the topic title and came here to post that exact video. I even explained the photo/album analogy to my teacher and she said it was a really good way to think of it.

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#6

I still find it difficult to understand the analogy for album and foto after looking at the video but I do understand this graph:

Screenshot 2023-12-14 at 12.31.54 PM
Screenshot 2023-12-14 at 12.31.54 PM741×394 78.3 KB

It states that when you want to state something to someone else, or want to describe your will, then you use こと。
If you use momentary verbs or verbs that not vague but represent actions in a situation, then you use の。
I hope this helps~

#7

Think about it this way. の is used to describe a single detail. What’s being honed in on here is ‘eating’. It’d be like saying “I like to eat food” to someone. You only get the information that the person likes to eat. This isn’t the case with こと. Instead, we’re getting a much larger picture. It’d be like saying “I like lots a things about eating” or “I like eating and everything related to it”. Instead of a single detail about what they like, you’re now getting a larger picture of their interest in eating (multiple pictures out of the photo album instead of just one).

I realized I didn’t explain this very well, and that’s actually because this is a bit confusing to me as well. It doesn’t make sense to me why 泥棒が走っていくことを見た is wrong because I would just assume this means that you saw the whole situation of the robbery. Same with something like 日記に日本を旅行したのを書いた - like to me it feels like in some situations you simply mean to say that this is all you wrote (although that’d be a bit odd, but it could be true, right?) So if anything, I really think context matters a lot in these cases. But then again, I’m not really sure.

#8

Gonna try going through the examples you gave.

This one would literally mean that you went to your diary and just wrote, “I traveled throughout Japan.”

Presumably, if you’re writing about your trip in your diary, you’re providing details. If you wanted to convey that you literally just wrote “I traveled throughout Japan,” it would probably have quotation marks around it, pretty similar to how I’m doing it in English. In that case, I’d guess it’d be something like, 日記に「日本を旅行した」と書いた

The clause 泥棒が走っていくこと is conveying all the things about the thief running, including abstract aspects of it. Just like how 食べること conveys abstract aspects of eating, which is a case you understand. In very simple terms, you can’t use 見る with こと because you can’t see the abstract. (Edit: this is over-simplified; see one of my later responses for more information about how this sentence could be correct in some contexts.)

An easy example to see how こと conveys has a certain layer of “abstract-ness” to it is in the phrase, “君のことが好き” instead of saying “君が好き”. It’s far more common to include こと because otherwise it would just be saying one likes the person, rather than the entire idea that constitutes that person.

#9

But why can’t I choose to use の to imply a single thing still? We don’t have to use quotes for something like this in English, so I mean it’d be natural there’s other ways to put things right? The issue I’m having is why there are certain situations where you can only use の or こと with some verbs? It seems a bit odd to me that the video expresses this as a hard rule rather than more of a common theme. nvm I see now

Okay that makes sense. However, my question then pivots to 聞く. The OP’s example sentence uses 聞く with ことを but the video I shared mentions that 聞く is one of these verbs that should not be used with こと since it shares the same characteristic of being used with momentary actions. This is why I’m lost here, and why I don’t fully understand why some of these sentences cannot use こと or の depending on what verb is being used.

#10

I think you can simply get around this by adding the additional piece of info that こと gives an abstract/intangible feel to the thing it is nominalizing. You can like the abstract things (so 好き works with こと), but you can’t perceive them (so verbs like 聞く、見る don’t work). I think the single-picture vs. album analogy mostly works, but the important thing is that こと means “intangible thing.” That’s why you cannot say:

美味しいことはありませんか

you would have to instead say
美味しいものはありませんか

If you add the intangibility aspect of こと to your single picture vs. album understanding of the difference between the two, then I think all cases we’ve discussed in this thread will be accounted for.

#11

… saying one likes the body of the person. Things are going to happen, if you say that.

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#12

Yeah that part already makes sense to me. The issue I’m having though still is that the OPs example sentence uses 聞くwith こと even though the video says this is a no go. So I’m wondering where the line gets drawn. Even though the video states that you can only use の with those type of verbs it seems that isn’t actually true given the sentence we have from the OP.

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#13

After thinking about it, I think you’re right about this.

Verbs like 聞く and 見る generally deal with more tangible, observable actions or events, but in the case of

the usage of ということ here implies that what’s being heard is not the direct statement “This restaurant is delicious” but rather the abstract notion or concept represented by the statement. It’s like hearing about the reputation or the idea that this restaurant is delicious.

This ということ pattern might present many more exceptions to the supposed “rule” that you cannot use these verbs of perception with こと. It’s not really a rule, but just a general pattern that usually holds due to the nature of こと being intangible

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#14

On another note, I believe even the sentence

could be correct in some (possibly “rare”) contexts. Using こと could imply a more nuanced perception or understanding/inference drawn from witnessing the act.

For instance, it could suggest that the observer not only physically saw the thief running but also gathered some abstract idea or implication from that sight. Perhaps they inferred the urgency of the situation or the suspicious nature of the act. So using こと with verbs like 見る could convey a slightly different nuance or interpretation of the observed action, but probably in most cases it’s just a mistake to do that as you simply mean “I saw the thief running away, it’s not that deep bro”

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#15

Ahh I think I see now. I was too caught up in the analogy itself and forgetting the fact that こと represents an abstraction of an idea. Very similar to how ‘about’ works in English. You would most likely never use the word ‘about’ with verbs such as “see”, “hear” or “feel” but there are some cases (like OPs example sentence) where, just like in English, about (or the concept itself) works.

Something like “I can hear her sing” wouldn’t work with こと because it involves a momentary action interacting with a tangible thing. But, you could use こと in a sentence such as “I heard that she sings” because this could involve the ‘about’ part of her singing, essentially being “I heard about her singing”.

Is this what you were getting at? I think this makes a lot more sense now. I still don’t quite understand why 日記に日本を旅行したのを書いた wouldn’t work though because in reality, would this not just imply “I wrote in my diary that I traveled around Japan” – but I guess now I see what you mean about how this would probably be quoted in Japanese, just like how this is a bit awkward to write in English without quotes.

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#16

Yeah, it’s pretty natural to hear about someone’s singing. Similarly, you can hear about the restaurant, that it is good. So in those cases, this about analogy is an easy way of seeing why こと can be used with these verbs of perception in some cases. For the verb “to see”, the “about” analogy won’t work as well, but the こと concept remains unchanged.

For the sentence

日記に日本を旅行したのを書いた

I think we already established it’s more natural to quote what you wrote if it was truly your intention to merely state what you actually wrote. However, I additionally think the above sentence would just be weird. In English, it works to simply say “I wrote in my diary that I traveled throughout Japan”, and it doesn’t sound too bad, but I think the Japanese sentence above is just unnatural.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen 書く be the verb that you use on something nominalized with の. I think it’s because の emphasizes the action itself, so it’s like saying you wrote the action, which is kinda impossible. So rather than meaning the intended “I wrote in my diary that I traveled throughout Japan,” it actually sounds more like the awkward “I wrote in my diary having traveled throughout Japan.” At least that’s my impression of the main thing wrong with that sentence.

On another note, I’m even struggling to come up with an example where you can nominalize the past tense of 旅行する with の and have a natural-sounding sentence, so maybe that’s yet another problem with the sentence. I think it’s because any time I try to envision 旅行した, I think of multiple things (so こと is more fitting), rather than the simple act of having traveled

EDIT: I finally came up with one:

私と一緒に日本を旅行したのを忘れないでね

This is asking the other person not to forget the fact of having traveled together.

私と一緒に日本を旅行したということを忘れないでね

This is asking the other person not to forget the notion of having traveled together, with all the experiences that come with it.

Both are natural, just with different meanings.

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#17

I am not sure how I feel about that statement

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