It’s often said that は means “as for”, which in many ways feels kinda strange. I mean, if you look up “as for” in an EN->JP dictionary, you’re not going to find 「は」 listed as a translation. However, one argument is that both 「は」 and “as for” have the same restriction that they always(?) need to be attached to something definite:
O As for the dog
X As for some dog
O その犬は
X ある犬は
Furthermore, there are certain types of sentences where は seems to function very similarly to English “as for”. In my opinion, perhaps the most compelling type is object-topicalization:
僕がケーキを食べた。 -> ケーキは僕が食べた。
I ate the cake. -> As for the cake, I ate it.
The next type is using 「XはYがZ」 to mean “X has Y that is Z”, which some people like to think of as “As for X, its Y is Z”:
春は花がきれいです – Spring has beautiful flowers
太郎は頭がいい – Tarou has a good head = Tarou is smart
There’s also some arguments sometimes made for は = “as for” due to “pseudo-transitive” predicates like 好き or contrastive usages of は, but I will not get into that…
What I’m curious about is the enigmatic 「僕はうなぎです」 (“As for me, I’ll have eel”, not “I am an eel”), which everybody loves to point out, then proceeds to NEVER bring up another example. Is this just an idiom, or is there more to it than that? Using my perpetually rudimentary Japanese, I created similar sentences where the topic is not the subject. Could these sentences ever be natural? For each sentence that’s valid, would replacing は with が be grammatically correct without drastically changing the meaning?
* 僕は、うなぎです = “As for me, [I’ll have] eel.”
* 僕は、スペイン語です = “As for me, I’m [learning] Spanish.”
* 僕は、漢字だと思います = “For me, I think it’s kanji [that I struggle with most].”
* アメリカ人は、コーヒーです = “As for Americans, [they prefer] coffee.”
* 新しい言語を習得するのは時間なんです = “Learning a new language is a matter of time.”
* 冬はスキーです = “As for Winter, it’s skiing [that I like to do/that is popular].”
* 値段は、問題がある “With regards to the price, we have a problem.”
* 本は、時間がない = “As for books, I don’t have time [to read them].”
6 comments
https://www.nihongo-appliedlinguistics.net/wp/archives/9054
This is the first result when you google ウナギ文, with examples such as 「私は105号室だ」, 「『ノルウェーの森』は村上春樹だ」, and「東京は初めてだ」. Yes, your examples should work too, but only with sufficient context.
It depends on the context but you’re mostly right
Even Japanese ask this question:
[https://ddnavi.com/news/696085/a/](https://ddnavi.com/news/696085/a/)
It gives a few other “unagi phrase” examples like 「僕は東京都だ」
But to me it’s all just about context, isn’t it? 「僕はうなぎです」could actually mean “I am an eel” when not ordering a meal.
Since eel is a creature it would usually be written as ウナギ.
All of these could make sense in the right context. Maybe the one about language learning would be a stretch but I guess if someone was asking about what is most important for learning a language (I still think you might need a few more words).
None of these work naturally with が in place of は.
は is still something I am wrapping my head around. And probably always will be unless I get the opportunity to live in Japan and get close to full fluency. I guess it can be hard to translate because it is more abstract than a word. It acts more like a spotlight, highlighting what you are generally talking about or what is important in this context. That can often get close to the English “as for” but not always.