(This was all put into google translate)
犬が好きな人 (Inu ga suki na hito) People who like dogs.
犬は好きな人 (Inu ha suki na hito) Dogs are my favorite people.
I thought this was really interesting I thought how would this sentence turn out if I said ha instead of ga. what are your thoughts.
4 comments
Still hard to understand because of absurdity
don’t trust google translate, these are still interchangeable (no, deepl isn’t 100% trustworthy either, and for the love of deity please do not use chatgpt for this)
there is no strict grammatical distinction like this, one can even have a は clause within a が clause – it’s not super common but i’ve definitely read it multiple times and brought it to the attention of native instructors and language partners and had them verify that it is perfectly natural
『犬「が」好きな人』is correct as “People who like dog”, however, we do not say 『犬「は」好きな人』. If there is no more context, it does not make any sense.
If you say as full sentence such as 「彼は，動物は嫌いだけれど，犬は好きな人」(Although he does not like animal, but he only likes dog), it is correct.
As an other example,
彼は寿司「が」好き・・・he likes a lot of kinds of food(<=this is hidden context so need to make sure by asking or guessing however most likely he enjoys eating), and he likes especially Sushi.
彼は寿司「は」好き・・・ He does not like to eat fish (<=this is hidden context so need to make sure by asking or guessing however most likely he does not like fish to eat ), but he likes Sushi.
I think the translator is trying to make a prediction as to what’s happening next. 犬は好きな人 is incomplete and it’s trying to say “dogs (verb+action) their favourite person”
E.g. 犬は好きな人に対して尻尾を振る。
Dogs will wave their tail at their favourite person.
I’m not great at explaining grammar but I hope that was helpful