- Forum >
- Topic: Japanese >
- "There are animals on the mou…
"There are animals on the mountain."
Translation:山には動物がいます。
26 Comments
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.
189
My question is why does Duolingo require the は after に if は is generally considered to be optional in that case?
590
"山にはどうぶつがいます。" and "山にどうぶつがいます。" both sentence are correct and have more or less the same meaning. What exactly is the difference? Can this difference get lost by a translation into a natural English?
630
Generally speaking います is for animate (living) objects (animals, people etc) and あります is for inanimate ones (tables, chairs, cars etc)