"There are animals on the mountain."
Translation:山には動物がいます。
35 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
To those asking why に is followed by は i will paraphrase an excellent answer i saw earlier:
Dont think of は as the subject marker. Rather, the topic marker. に is still correct usage for "on the mountain" (山に) but by putting the は after, it becomes the topic.
It would be a slightly different sentence if the は was used for どうぶつ because it would be something like this: "there are animals on the mountain" vs "the mountain has animals on it". An ever so slight difference.
1027
Asked the same question, but reported anyway, pretty sure they both should be accepted in both cases.
1027
Why is "on the mountain" 山の上に for trees, but just 山に for animals? (it won't accept them the other way around).
107
It's because animals are ON the mountain, and the theme is "on the mountain", not just "mountain".
います (and あります) require an indirect object indicated by に.
At first, I also thought the に should be optional, because that is true for sentences that describe attributes (rather than the existance) of something:
山は動物が大きい(です) would mean "The animals on the mountain are big".
In this case, the は particle is enough to indicate location.