The second は is contrastive. It means that you don’t smoke *cigarettes*, but that you might smoke other things.
Edit:
You can “upgrade” both を and が to make them contrastive.
For example:
クリスタルがほしい = (I) want crystals.
クリスタルはほしい＝ (I) want crystals (but maybe not other things).
I dont usually talk here cuz most posts are way beyond my skill level but this post made me realize i can recognize the kanji for わたし now which makes it the first one ive memorized and i didnt know how to make this a separate post so i hope you’ll excuse this unrelated comment but i just feel proud of myself
There’s no problem with double は in a sentence grammatically speaking. It may sound weird at first, but it’s correct lol
I would translate the sentence as, “As for me, it’s *tobacco* that I don’t smoke.”
It’s not a word-for-word translation, but it’s so both “I” and “tobacco” give the vibes of being the important topic-y bits of the sentence because, like, the first bit of Japanese grammar you learn is は=topic.
I could be totally misleading you unintentionally, but it makes sense to me, so I’m sharing even if I don’t know if it makes sense to anyone else.
4 comments
The second は is contrastive. It means that you don’t smoke *cigarettes*, but that you might smoke other things.
Edit:
You can “upgrade” both を and が to make them contrastive.
For example:
クリスタルがほしい = (I) want crystals.
クリスタルはほしい＝ (I) want crystals (but maybe not other things).
I dont usually talk here cuz most posts are way beyond my skill level but this post made me realize i can recognize the kanji for わたし now which makes it the first one ive memorized and i didnt know how to make this a separate post so i hope you’ll excuse this unrelated comment but i just feel proud of myself
There’s no problem with double は in a sentence grammatically speaking. It may sound weird at first, but it’s correct lol
I would translate the sentence as, “As for me, it’s *tobacco* that I don’t smoke.”
It’s not a word-for-word translation, but it’s so both “I” and “tobacco” give the vibes of being the important topic-y bits of the sentence because, like, the first bit of Japanese grammar you learn is は=topic.
I could be totally misleading you unintentionally, but it makes sense to me, so I’m sharing even if I don’t know if it makes sense to anyone else.