“なん”は、何？

[vincenthugo]

this might be a silly question, but how come i hear 'nan' every now and then after verbs and such? i don't seem to see it written form (or maybe it's just my textbooks)

eg., ________ha, suki nan desu.

or

honki nan dattara...

is this just a filler word? or does it have a specific meaning?

thanks!
-hugo

[Joey]

hmmm.... I don't know if i can explain it too well (because i hardly have a grasp on this grammar point as well), but as i understand it, i may be wrong, i think it marks reasoning.
Like for example:
どうしてピザをたべますか？
すきなんですよ。
Why are you eating pizza?
Because I like it.

Now what i'm telling you could be wrong so please have some one else varify this before you believe it (and please if i'm wrong someone correct me!!!)

[Steve Bryant]

It's because すき is a na adjective, and when explaining, rather than just stating facts, you can use short form + ん, so すきな becomes すきなん.

Basicly the ん is the "because" in すきなんですよ.

I hope that makes sense, if not hopefully someone better at explaining grammar can help.

Steve

[Jason]

The others have already touched on this. The なん is actually part of 2 different things. Like Steve said, the な comes from 好き being a na-adjective. The ん actually belongs with です here. It's short for のです. The のだ (polite form: のです) construction is used to explain a reason or situation. It literally means something along the lines of, "It is that..." It can directly follow verbs and i-adjectives, but when it follows nouns and na-adjective it needs a な in between them.

[vincenthugo]

ahh...thanks for the clarification, everyone. that makes a lot of sense. things seem to easily get shortened in japanese, so it's nice to know where everything comes from!

arigatou

[Jordi]

I think that was covered in a JPod lesson, but I don't remember which one, it was around beginner lesson 100. I'd like to listen to that again, never really understood the whole 　　のです thing so... if anyone knows which lessons this is mentioned in, please reply to this

よろしくおねがいします