Hello got a question, any answer is appreciated! What would the literal translation for “僕 は x ” be? Example: 僕 は バカ だ = I’m an idiot or 僕 は バカ だ= as for me, I’m an idiot
I assume 私/僕 works the same way, just the masculine form^
As WA is not a feature of English, there is no literal translation for any sentence of that structure that is strongly meaningful.
Boku wa unagi desu.
Look for YouTube videos that explain topic prominent languages versus subject prominent languages
I don’t understand the question
“as for” is a good translation for は for people trying to conceptualize how it works grammatically. Other than that, it’s usually not so great. There’s not really no such thing as “a literal translation”.
In the vast majority of cases 私は and 僕は sentences are not Japanese. It would be nice if textbooks would stop being so lazy with their examples but until then just use them to learn the necessary grammar and vocabulary then move on.
> 僕 は バカ だ = I’m an idiot or 僕 は バカ だ
you love saying that
What are you really asking? You know that “boku” is a word that you can use to refer to yourself, like “I” in English (there are many more, not just 私 and 僕). And you know how to make a sentence with it. Do you understand how to use は? There’s no way to accurately translate just 僕は unless maybe you write “I (boyish undertone) (topic marker)” which is not really a translation and more like a diagram from Linguistics 101. So… what are you really asking?
this is the most basic structure of japanese grammar
XはY or XはYがZ
speaking of X… Y
speaking of X… Y is/has Z property/action
there’s no way to directly translate particles, they are grammatical flags that tag the previous word or phrase as having a particular use in the sentence
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As WA is not a feature of English, there is no literal translation for any sentence of that structure that is strongly meaningful.
Boku wa unagi desu.
Look for YouTube videos that explain topic prominent languages versus subject prominent languages
I don’t understand the question
“as for” is a good translation for は for people trying to conceptualize how it works grammatically. Other than that, it’s usually not so great. There’s not really no such thing as “a literal translation”.
In the vast majority of cases 私は and 僕は sentences are not Japanese. It would be nice if textbooks would stop being so lazy with their examples but until then just use them to learn the necessary grammar and vocabulary then move on.
> 僕 は バカ だ = I’m an idiot or 僕 は バカ だ
you love saying that
What are you really asking? You know that “boku” is a word that you can use to refer to yourself, like “I” in English (there are many more, not just 私 and 僕). And you know how to make a sentence with it. Do you understand how to use は? There’s no way to accurately translate just 僕は unless maybe you write “I (boyish undertone) (topic marker)” which is not really a translation and more like a diagram from Linguistics 101. So… what are you really asking?
this is the most basic structure of japanese grammar
XはY or XはYがZ
speaking of X… Y
speaking of X… Y is/has Z property/action
there’s no way to directly translate particles, they are grammatical flags that tag the previous word or phrase as having a particular use in the sentence