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What is this sentence syntactic structure?

お国では何語を話すのですか。

If what the sentence is all about is "which language", why does the action verb ("to talk") need to be nominalized?

I can't clear my mind about what this sentence means literally.

naruto
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Starckman
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    This の is called "explanatory-*no*". Does this answer your question?: [What is the meaning of ～んです/～のだ/etc?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/5398/5010) – naruto Feb 24 '21 at 13:36
  • "One usage that I was taught and is not mentioned above for んです is to soften a question or statement." It means that it could simply be お国では何語を話すですか。But Japanese doesn't use relative clause to ask such question? Just form a normal, SOV sentence, and add a copula at the end? – Starckman Feb 24 '21 at 13:51
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    話すです is not grammatical – Leebo Feb 24 '21 at 14:14
  • Not really, because my question is not about the meaning of のです in particular, but the whole structure of the sentence – Starckman Feb 24 '21 at 16:34
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    I was just replying to your statement "It means that it could simply be お国では何語を話すですか". This sentence would not be acceptable grammatically. So what was said about んです does not mean that. – Leebo Feb 24 '21 at 22:11
  • @Leebo My response was to another user's comment (asking me whether the topic "What is the meaning of ～んです/～のだ/etc?" contained any answer to my question), which, apparently, was deleted. Next time I should @ to be sure. – Starckman Feb 24 '21 at 22:18
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    Does this answer your question? [What is the meaning of ～んです/～のだ/etc?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/5398/what-is-the-meaning-of-%ef%bd%9e%e3%82%93%e3%81%a7%e3%81%99-%ef%bd%9e%e3%81%ae%e3%81%a0-etc) – henreetee Feb 25 '21 at 14:54

1 Answers1

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To break down:

  • お国: "your homeland". 国 can refer to one's homeland (see this). With お, it respectfully refers to the listener's homeland.
  • で: location marker
  • は: topic marker
  • 何語: "what language"
  • を: direct object marker
  • 話す: "to speak"
  • の: explanatory-の for seeking clarification
  • です: politeness marker
  • か: question marker

Put together, the literal translation of this sentence is "In your homeland, what language do [you] speak?". The subject (あなた(は)) has been dropped because it can be inferred by the context and the use of honorific お国.

のですか/んですか is a very common form of asking a question for clarification (i.e., you need some context that led to the question). There is no direct equivalent of this の/ん in English. Strictly speaking, this is a kind of relative clause, but you may forget the word nominalization here.

naruto
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  • "Strictly speaking, this is a kind of relative clause", then why does the noun (語) doesn't appear after the verb (話す), like in a relative clause (車を買った兄 'The older brother who bought the car') – Starckman Feb 25 '21 at 08:01
  • @starckman I mean 話す is a relative clause that modifies の, which is a special noun. – naruto Feb 26 '21 at 03:12
  • So very literally this sentence means "Is the fact/explanation of which language you speak in your country?" – Starckman Feb 26 '21 at 13:26
  • @starckman Or "Is it that you speak what language?", but this is very strange and that's why I said you can practically forget relative clauses in this case. Japanese has a number of similar noun- and relative clause-based expressions (look up 形式名詞). – naruto Feb 26 '21 at 14:23
  • So here のです is precisely to ask a question for clarification. What would be the structure, the sentence, without this meaning of "asking for clarification" (that is, a more neutral sentence)? – Starckman Feb 26 '21 at 14:50
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    @starckman お国では何語を話しますか is the version without の. Which is more natural purely depends on the context, but you need の in, say, 80% of the time. – naruto Feb 26 '21 at 15:56
  • Understood, thanks! – Starckman Feb 26 '21 at 16:05