Hey there,
I hope it’s okey to post it here, because I am not quite sure if this is an error or not; for the vocabulary of 元, one of the example sentences is:
元は月の出しんなんです。I’m originally from the moon.
The first thing that irritated me was “元は” - I was thinking that this would make the Origin the subject of the sentence, and it got me puzzled; I get that the I is often considered “given in the context”, but what happens when you remove it - it still should be the subject, no?
This bugged me, because I thought I still didn’t get the Grammar. In the end I pushed it into an online translator, and this is what I got:
Originally it was the rise of the moon.
Which is a bit more in tune to what I would have expected as the meaning of that sentence. I then turned it around, and asked what would be the translation for “I am originally from the moon”, and this is what I got:
私は元々月から来ました。
Is this an error on the site, or are both translations valid? (And if so, why?)
One bit you’ve missed which you didn’t directly raise is that 出しん is 出身 with one of the kanji in kana. Does that help with your understanding of the sentence as a whole? (It should certainly help with the translator you’re using.)
For some context sentences, WK doesn’t display the kanji you haven’t learned yet. But you’ll never see someone write 出身 as 出しん, which trips the translator up. This is going to be the case for many context sentences, especially in the early levels.
i hate it when there is a mix of kanji and kana for one compound word… it always confuses me as to where the word starts and ends and it makes it harder to check in a dictionary…
Whenever I see posts like this I always try and work out what the problem could be before reading the post properly. I was very confused at the apparent んなんです. It wasn’t until I saw the English that I realized it was meant to be 出身. I feel like just having furigana would be a million times better.
は doesn’t make something the subject of the sentence That would be が. は actually creates an absolute clause (i.e. non-grammatical connection) to label something as a discourse topic.
You can see は in the places where you might expect other particles, but it’s helpful (I think) to remember it actually doesn’t serve a grammar function, but rather a discourse function. For example:
らーめんはおばあさんがつくりました。It might be translated as, “My grandmother made ramen.” This is a fine translation, but it does not imitate the grammar of the original sentence. Literally, the sentence starts with the grammatically unrelated らーめんは which essentially marks Ramen as the main character/topic for a bit. It’s kind of like saying, “Hey, I’m talking about Ramen now.” This is followed by the subject and verb. To translate the whole Japanese sentence in a more grammatical way you might try, “I’m talking about ramen now; My grandmother made it.” Note I used the pronoun “it” because the object of the verb is not technically noted in the sentence. It’s just implied by the context of らーめんは.
This is important because は could be marking different nouns that would have a different grammatical relationship to the verb (Subject, object, etc.), and to always assume it will be the grammatical “subject” may throw you off
Thank you all for your input and clarifications on this; I learned a lot just by reading through it; so all of your comments was really valuable to me! My main and most valuable takeaway for me is that thinking of -は as the subject is wrong and it should be thought of rather as the main topic. I remember learning that you could also use it in a sentence like this: 毎日サンドイッチの食べます、今日はラーメンの食べます。 — In this case -は is also not a subject, but it is used to put emphasis on the contrast that today you are doing something different (at least when I remember it correctly ).
And yes, if I change the 出しん to 出身, the translator actually makes the expected translation: I’m originally from the moon. Interesting to know. Another reason to learn your Kanji (and also use them ).
and it makes it harder to check in a dictionary…
That would be が. は actually creates an absolute clause (i.e. non-grammatical connection) to label something as a discourse topic.
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. Thanks for the correction