The use of こと
 

「こと」

This seems to be a ridiculously common "word" (if you can, strictly speaking, call it that, but whatever) and it also looks like it's used in quite a few different contexts and meanings.

Can anybody please explain me what this word actually means and how you use it in different sentences?

I think there's another topic about this, but unfortunately it's in heavily kanji-ized Japanese and so I can't read it... If you kept the kanji amount down a bit, that'd be great.

Thanks in advance!

こと means "thing." It is also a nominalizer. how to use koto properly

Thanks, but.. kanji flood, and I didn't get all that much from it. Some of those answers sounded a bit vague and unsure, which doesn't really make me confident in them.

And I have to say, I trust people here a lot more than random people on a random website.

こと is one of the ways to turn a verb into a noun. English doesn't do it exactly parallel to the way Japanese does, but it's like turning "to eat" into "eating."

Other "nominalizers" are の and もの and わけ and ところ.

For example,
ピザをつくることができます。
pizza-OBJECT to-make-NOMINALIZER-SUBJECT able-to.
[i] can make pizza. (or, more literally, "I can do 'making pizza.'")

There are rules for when to use こと、の、もの, but I'll let someone more skilled than I talk about those. There are subtle differences I haven't fully internalized yet.

If words like "cleft" and "nominalizer" and "accusative tense" are your thing, then read: http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/lin/nomz/pdf/...s_Japanese.pdf

It's a linguist's approach to Japanese (and Korean) nominalizers.

I don't really speak Linguist (or whatever I'm supposed to call it) but that makes a lot more sense. Thank you. :)

I've also (I think) seen it after names, though. Does that make it more like "in X's case" or something?

(Wth, thought I replied earlier, where'd it go?)

Thanks, this makes a lot more sense. I may be wrong, but I also think こと can be used with names? What does it mean in that case? If it's just "in Mr. X's case, ..." what distinguishes it from は／が?

Edit: what the HELL.. I posted, it wasn't there, now I wrote a new reply and the old one came back too.. Dammit. Time to check the caching settings, I think.

You may want to learn the basic terms that come up in grammar explanations, otherwise you may have some trouble understanding what they are talking about.

No, for the "case" of something ～の場合 would be "In the case of ~"
You can look at examples here: “の場合”の検索結果（519 件）：英辞郎 on the Web：スペースアルク

Like KyleGoetz already said, こと means "Thing"
So ～のこと can be thought of as "Things of / about　～"

For example:
うちの息子のことなんですけど。高熱を出しているんです。
It's about my son. He has a high fever.
Source: “のことなん”の検索結果（12 件）：英辞郎 on the Web：スペースアルク

Another example would be something like: ～のこと好きだ。
“のこと 好き”の検索結果（120 件）：英辞郎 on the Web：スペースアルク

Or even ～のことになると
お金のことになると、彼は全くいい加減だ。
When it comes to money, he is completely irresponsible.
“のことになると”の検索結果（11 件）：英辞郎 on the Web：スペースアルク

I think it can just make things sound less direct too, which is a good thing.

By the way, if kanji on the internet is a big problem for you right now, I recommend using Firefox with Rikaichan

Oh, so could I generally say: whenever there is a の behind a verb, it´s a nominalizer? In the past I had some difficulties in translating for example .. いきるの... - could this have likewise the meaning "living"?

Yes, one can say that except for when the sentence ends with a "verb + の", in which case it's a phrase nominalization.

いきるのはつらい。= Living is difficult. = To live is difficult.

By attaching の to the verb いきる, you can now treat it as a noun; therefore, you can place the subject marker は. の in this usage, means こと.

生きるのはつらい。＝　生きることはつらい。
＿＿＿＿

When you see the "verb + の" at the end of a sentence, it's a casual sentence/question ender. の doesn't mean こと in that usage.

どこに行くの？ = Where are you going?
なんのえいがを見るの？ = What movie are you going to see?

(The question mark (?) is not used in formal Japanese writing. I used it above because this is casual writing.)

Oh yes, this sounds very replicable. I get more and more enthusiastic about the japanese language. You can envisage a lot of questions in the future :D
And if I´ve understood it right, I can use the の at the end of the sentence for interrogation in the casual way, but か in the formal way, right?

Greetings to Tokyo!