So I know that this particle and the other one whose name shall not be mentioned seems to give people A LOT of trouble. In some of my Japanese classes, I have been told that は means “is.” Im finding this to be problematic and quite a lazy way of explaining it.
For example, I was told:
私の名前は My name *is*
犬は the dog *is*
これは this *is*
Well, what happens when you say 私はウナギ？ Certainly, the *is* explanation does not work here. I can understand why, especially for complete beginners, but sooner or later, this explanation just doesnt work. I had to make major shifts in my thinking to start seeing は as “as for,” “regarding this/that.” I am undoing **years** of stuff that I feel was inadequately explained to me in the classroom.
What do you think about は being translated as “is?”
10 comments
It isn’t, period. It’s a particle, not a verb, and certainly not a copula. Japanese is too different from English, one cannot translate words individually like this, especially ones that have zero equivalence like は or です. Understand one phrase at a time.
That’s… pretty damn terrible, actually. I have issue with people translated ‘desu’ as ‘is’, which is at least defensible.
This is revealing a *severe* problem in your Japanese Classes, in that they are trying (and failing) to shoehorn Japanese sentence structure into English sentence structure. Japanese is Subject-Object-Verb, not Subject-Verb-Object.
If は translate as is. Then how would これはペンです be translated?
Awful. When I took Japanese in college we were told です is “is”, which is still wrong but a much better comparison than は being that. Poor students, that’s going to create so much confusion 🙁
Wrong, just wrong.
You have either ‘A is B’ sentences or ‘A does B’ sentences (technically, for sentences, read complete phrases). Neither require は. For ‘A is B’ sentences, the ‘is’ (as near as can be decently translated in English) is provided either by the copula (だ・です) or by the head i-adjective.
は marks the topic – the old already known contextual information that underlies the conversation. The best English translation I’ve come across for は is “as for”. E.g. 私の名前はジムです “As for my name, (it) is Jim”. The です here links the predicate noun ジム to the implied subject (it). In this case the subject also happens to be the same as the topic 私の名前, but in general they can be different.
は does not translate as anything. It is a grammatical unit called a Particle. Particles are somewhat unique to the Japanese language. They are markers that give a word a particular purpose or usage in a sentence.
In general, は marks the topic of the sentence. It shifts the focus to that object in order to describe it or its actions. It does have other uses though, such as providing comparison or for asking very nuanced questions (Ex: お名前は？). When learning Japanese, or any other language for that matter, it is counter-intuitive to attempt to “translate” every aspect of a sentence. Translation is about conveying the meaning, not transferring each individual word into its English counterpart.
I think the best translation for は is “as far as (preceding noun/idea) goes…”. So in your examples:
私の名は As far as my name goes…(whatever is happening with my name)
犬は As far as the dog goes…(whatever is happening with the dog)
これは As far as this goes…(whatever is happening with this)
私はウナギ. As far as I go, it’s unagi (sounds like someone is ordering sushi, specifying a favorite flavor, or whatever best fits the context)
Directly translating it as “is” can work to make the translation sound smoother in some instances, but should not be taken as a blanket rule.
It doesn’t always mean “is”. You can’t look at Japanese through the lens of English. Often it *will* mean “is” are “are”, but, not always and well…it’s hard to explain and grammar textbooks don’t do a good job. That and particle-who-shall-not-be-named mostly get learned through practice and lots of reading. Eventually it becomes intuitive and you see it as a particle to link things together rather than a word itself.
“は = is” is demonstrably wrong. However, your example doesn’t contradict it.
“is” comes from “to be”. He is. She is. It is. But there are other forms as well. I am. You are. Etc.
Your example, 私はウナギ, means I _am_ an eel. It’s still “is” in that example.
The closest translation I’ve seen for Xは is “as for X”. But English and Japanese are not closely related languages, more often than not there is not a one-size-fits-all translation.
The particle “は” (ha) is used in Japanese to indicate the topic of a sentence, which is often (but not always) the same as the subject. The translation of “は” as “is” can be a problematic simplification because it can lead to misunderstandings of its function in Japanese grammar. While “は” can sometimes be translated as “is” in simple sentences, it’s essential to understand that the particle is doing more work in the sentence than simply equating the subject with a predicate.
For example, consider the sentence 「私は学生です」(Watashi wa gakusei desu). While it can be translated as “I am a student,” the function of “は” in the sentence is to indicate that the topic of the sentence is “I” and that the rest of the sentence provides information about that topic. In this case, the sentence’s topic is “I,” and the rest says, “I am a student.” The “は” particle helps to create a clear distinction between the topic and the rest of the sentence, which is essential in conveying meaning in Japanese.
So while it’s convenient to translate “は” as “is” in some cases, it’s essential to understand that this translation is only a rough approximation and doesn’t capture the full function of the particle in Japanese grammar.