Can someone explain lesson 3.2 a little more?

OK can someone explain the "koto ga arimasu ka" in lesson 3.2? I still don't quite understand what "koto" is and what it means. Also I was wondering why in the first line it says "O sake o nonda koto ga arimasu ka?" and in the second line it says "Īe, o sake o nonda koto wa ari masen". Why is the first line have "ga" and the second line used "wa"?

https://www.rocketlanguages.com/your-community/japanese-grammar/lesson-3-2-wa-and-ga That should clear up your question about wa and ga. The ~koto ga/wa arimasu literally means "~thing exists". In Japanese, we don't have pronouns such as "that" and "who" etc. Conjugated verbs are used instead to make relative clauses. For example, "Tatsu hito" means "a person *who* stands". There is no "who" in the Japanese sentence, rather the verb directly qualifies the noun. Or "Shashimi o tabete iru neko" means "A cat *that* is eating shashimi". Now, "koto" means "thing". So when I, for example, say "nomu koto", this means "the act/thing of drinking". The koto is a nominalizer to the verb. In the past tense, when I say "nonda koto" it therefore means something like "the act of having drunk". So then put that together with "ga aru/arimasu", and you have "The act of having drunk exists" or more naturally, "I have drunk (at times)". Hope this helps. If you have other questions, ask. =)

there is still something that you have omitted, Pascal-san. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but there actually are pronouns for who, that, this, etc: dare = who sore = that (far from the speaker, but near the receiver) are = that (far from both the speaker and the receiver) kore = this and others like them. However, the above mentioned ones are used differently than in the cases that Pascal-san used in order to explain and these pronouns put a lot more emphasis on the direct object when used.

Whoops. Yeah, I meant to say that Japanese doesn't have *relative* pronouns like in English Grammar. i.e. There's no Japanese for a pronoun like "that/who/which" when it comes between a noun and a verb. Also, while "sore are dore etc." are treated as pronouns in English, in Japanese they're actually more like non-conjugating adjectives =) You do have subject/object pronouns like dare/kare/kanojo etc.

Thanks guys! Really appreciate the help!