“Shumi” is activities for a person to do mainly for pleasure, usually not for earning, during leisure time. So, it’s a word like “hobby”. When you say “My hobby is what”, the Japanese sentence would be;
– Watashi no Shumi wa Supo’otsu desu. (My hobby is doing sports.)
– Watashi no Shumi wa Ryokou desu. (My hobby is traveling.)
These sentences are “Noun predicate sentences”.
1. [Subject] wa [Noun] desu.
But a hobby is an activity. When you want to tell someone what is your hobby, it would be better to say what you are doing as a hobby by using a verb.
Bad example is as below;
<WRONG> Watashi no Shumi wa Oyogimasu.
This sentence says “My hobby swims.” Does a hobby swim like a human or a fish? No, a human kind swims. What you need to do is, with some technique, to put a verb into the [Noun] part of sentence construction 1.
There are some nouns whose function is to make a verb a noun-equivalent. We have recently learned a such “Formal Noun”, which is “Koto”.
<RIGHT> Watashi no Shumi wa Oyogu Koto desu. (My hobby is swimming.)
“Oyogu” is the dictionary form of verb “Oyogimasu (swim)”. When you connecting a verb to a noun behind, you need to conjugate the verb. So far, we have learned only the following type;
[Verb in Dictionary Form] + [Noun]
Other than dictionary form, Ta-form and Nai-form* can be connected to a noun, but these things will be explained in other opportunities.
Practice and remember the following conversations;
– Type of [Noun] desu.
A : Anata no Shumi wa Nan desuka. (What is your hobby?)
B : Watashi no Shumi wa Tsuri desu. (My hobby is fishing.)
– Type of [V-dic] + Koto desu.
A : Anata no Shumi wa Nan desuka. (What is your hobby?)
B : Watashi no Shumi wa Sakana o Tsuru Koto desu. (My hobby is to fish a fish.)
* Past tense of Nai-form, V-Nakatta can also be connected to a noun.
This post was written with reference to the exercise A4 on Section 18 of “Minna no Nihongo (2nd Edition)” published by “3A Corporation”
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