I just started learning the basics of Japanese and I came across a tik tok where Steve Harvey wanted to say something to a small Japanese boy (Ryuusei) who didn’t speak a word of English so he told the interpreter “tell him I love him” and she in turn told the little boy “スティーブハービーさんは流星くんのことが大好きなんだって。”.
Could somebody explain to me how the sentence is constructed because I’m a bit confused.
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There’s a couple of things in this sentence that, since you said you’ve only just started, I’d imagine would be quite confusing. If it’s the entire sentence that’s confusing you, then you should probably just continue to study grammar and work your way up to more complex sentences. That said, here is a breakdown.
スティーブハービーさんは – The は here tells us that “Steve Harvey” is the topic of the sentence.
流星くんのこと – The のこと here can’t really be translated into English, but it does change the nuance in Japanese. I wouldn’t worry too much about it for now. くん is an honorific that also does not get translated. So this part of the sentence in English is just “Ryuusei”.
が大好き – This is a common structure used when saying that someone likes something. 「AはBが(好き/大好き)」means “A (likes/loves) B”. It’s kind of hard to wrap your head around initially, but it’s structured this way since in Japanese, “like” is an adjective, not a verb.
なんだ – Short for なのだ. The の is called the “explanatory particle”. Again, you probably shouldn’t worry about it for now, but it’s good to know what it’s called for future reference. The reason that the な is there is that for nouns and certain adjectives, when using this particle, we have to have the な in there to make it grammatical. So 好きんだ is incorrect, it needs to be 好きなんだ. Finally, だ simply means “to be”.
って – This particle is used to indicate that something is a quote. So it’s added at the end of the sentence in this case because the interpreter is repeating something that someone else said.
Again, some of these points are a bit farther ahead if you’re still at absolute beginner, so I wouldn’t worry too much about it. If there’s anything I didn’t explain well enough let me know and I’d be happy to clear it up.