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Just started learning Japanese and have question with the following sentence.

わたしはえをみるのがすきです

Do I have to use の in this situation? Can I just say わたしはえをみるがすきです without the の？

macraf
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Law00
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1 Answers1

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You seem to be a native English speaker, so try thinking about it this way.

The sentence could be roughly translated as follows.

I like looking at drawings.

However, could you say the following?

I like look at drawings.

No. That is not valid English because you can only like a noun. "looking" is a noun that represents an action.

Similarly, えをみる is a verb. You cannot like a verb, so you have to nominalize it (convert it to a noun). That is what the の is doing, and that is why it is necessary.

seafood258
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