What does the 「いるん」in だれか好きな人がいるんですか。


Everything else in this sentence I understand except 「いるん」. Can someone tell
me it's meaning/purpose? Why can't I just say だれか好きな人ですか。?

My textbook translates the sentence as: " _Is there someone you like?_ "




です does not assert whether something exists or not. In a construction like

> ＡはBです

You're asserting that "A" is a "B" where both "A" and "B" are nouns.

If you just say,

> Aです

Then you're saying, " **I** am an A" since the presumed topic will be 私. It
never means, "There is A".

But, if you want to say that "there is _something_ ", then you have two
choices.

> 好きな人がいます。

There is someone I like.

> 好きな食べものがあります。

There is a food that I like.

The difference between います and あります being whether the word marked by が is a
living thing or not, respectively. In plain form, these become いる and ある.

You could ask,

> だれか好きな人がいますか

That would make sense. It would mean "Is there someone you like?"

In plain form, this would read

> だれか好きな人がいるの

Or something similar. However, it's a bit blunt. And the person asking is
curious (perhaps because of something _you_ said or other circumstances).

> だれか好きな人がいるのですか

with the insertion of の, they asking something more along the lines of

> Is it the case that there's someone who you like?

This の is an explanatory marker. It's suggesting that there's more going on
than just a question of whether there's someone you like. We don't have
anything like this in English. But, in Japanese, you usually add markers like
this to your sentences as a way of indicating where you're coming from.

This explanatory marker の often gets reduced to ん as in your example sentence

> だれか好きな人がいるんですか

So, while in English, "is it the case that..." sounds clunky or unnecessarily
verbose, in Japanese the insertion of の gives it a more human/natural sound.

