Meaning of いくのは


Cheers,

I'm teaching myself the language for a while now and I'm picking up on basic
grammar structure. Combined with a dictionary, I can occasionally even make
sense of a sentence!

But the full meaning of this one eludes me (as well as Google Translate and
Bing Translator). It's a review of a game I worked on:

> ゾンビを潰していくのは単純に楽しい。

It doesn't seem to be an error, even to a beginner.

From what I can tell, with help of Google Translate and OS X Japanese-English
dictionary, the components seem to be:

  * ゾンビ - zombie
  * を - object marker
  * 潰して - 'te' form of crush (Google Translate), destroy (Bing Translator), fit for (?!) (OS X dictionary)
  * いく - to go; "going to"
  * のは - I have no idea what this is; it seems to be composed of possessive "no" and as-for-# subject marker "wa"
  * 単純 - simplicity
  * に - location marker (here, in?)
  * 楽しい - enjoyable

So it seems to be a positive review; it seems to say "You will crush zombies
[のは] (which is?) enjoyable in simplicity."

What does のは above mean? What nuance am I missing?




Interesting choice of beginner's literature.

の is not the possessive, but a _nominalizer_ , i.e. it can make a verb (潰していく)
into a noun (潰していくの), which you can then use as the topic of the sentence
(using は). The analogous construction in English would be the gerund, i.e. to
crush → crushing.

Also, に is not the location marker, but turns the na-adjective 単純 into an
adverb.

Summarizing, we have

> ゾンビを潰していくのは単純に楽しい。  
>  Crushing zombies is simply enjoyable.

Watch out for particles that have multiple uses (の and に being the worst
cases).




Interesting choice of beginner's literature.

の is not the possessive, but a _nominalizer_ , i.e. it can make a verb (潰していく)
into a noun (潰していくの), which you can then use as the topic of the sentence
(using は). The analogous construction in English would be the gerund, i.e. to
crush → crushing.

Also, に is not the location marker, but turns the na-adjective 単純 into an
adverb.

Summarizing, we have

> ゾンビを潰していくのは単純に楽しい。  
>  Crushing zombies is simply enjoyable.

Watch out for particles that have multiple uses (の and に being the worst
cases).

