I hope this kind of question is allowed. I’m fairly new to Japanese and this particular distinction is confusing me a bit so I wondered if any of you could help me clarify. I understand that desu is used to indicate identity, equivalent to the primary sense of the English ‘to be’, and that arimasu is used in the sense of ‘to exist’ or ‘to be somewhere’. But there are some sentences in which they seem interchangeable, like the following:
銀行は郵便局の隣です
Or,
銀行が郵便局の隣にあります
Do both make sense here? If so, is there a difference in meaning, and is this difference equivalent to the difference between ‘the bank is next to the post office’ and ‘there is a bank next to the post office’ in English?
Thanks
6 comments
[Here’s](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/4qjzrp/desu_vs_arimasu_failing_to_comprehend_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) a pretty solid post that explains it :3
Think of it this way.
です is ‘to be’ “the bank is next to the post office”
あります is ‘there is/are’ “there is a bank next to the post office”
It’s obviously more complicated then that, but this is a good way to start.
The way I think about it is that です means is/are/to be/ etc. Whereas to me あります means to exist. Hope this helps a bit.
You can think です as a contraction of ではあります or であります.
So a lot if times the question of あります vs. です is more a question of the difference between particles than the difference between similar verbs. In this case, the difference between the に particle vs the で particle.
The differences are subtle but with the に particle (にあります), you’re emphasizing state as a locality which is why the word “there” is used in the English translation.
With the で particle (です) it’s really just state as a concept and so you don’t use “there” in the English translation, and it functions as just a plain copula.
OP, welcome to learning Japanese. These questions are definitely good to ask, there are no stupid questions! Do the other responses answer your question?
No Japanese would look too far into either, I think. Both clearly communicate the message or at least enough that nobody has to think twice about what you mean.
Sometimes は・が can have more nuance:
[https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/39180/use-%E3%81%AF-or-%E3%81%8C-with-%E3%81%82%E3%82%8B-when-the-phrase-doesnt-explicit-the-place](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/39180/use-%E3%81%AF-or-%E3%81%8C-with-%E3%81%82%E3%82%8B-when-the-phrase-doesnt-explicit-the-place)
[https://www.wasabi-jpn.com/japanese-grammar/ha-vs-ga-five-points-you-need-to-know/](https://www.wasabi-jpn.com/japanese-grammar/ha-vs-ga-five-points-you-need-to-know/)