天気 different examples dont match up?

The word use has an example:
今日の天気 - today’s weather

But the example sentence uses ‘todays weather’ without the ‘no’ particle…how come?
今日は天気がわるいです。

The weather is bad today.

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I believe the particle は in the second sentence marks 今日 as the topic, so whatever comes after that is referring to 今日 (in this case, “weather is bad”).

It would more directly translate as something like, “As for today, the weather is bad,” while the first sentence uses a possessive の like the apostrophe in “Today’s”.

At least that’s how Genki explains it. My grammar is rough.

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Right, when I use google translate, 今日の天気は悪いです is ‘today’s weather is bad’…so I guess it just depends on personal preference on which version to use…or maybe the WaniKani version is the more commonly used one.

Hello @oli1980 ,

The first one is possessive, “today’s weather” or “the weather of today.”

The second one is saying, “today, the weather was bad.”

You could also say 今日の天気はわるいです。

In my college Japanese course, we would typically use 今日は version.

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It depends on the intent. は can be used in a contrastive sense: Japanese Particles : The Contrastive wa

今日の天気はわるい - Today’s weather is bad (neutral)
今日は天気がわるい - Today’s weather is bad (contrastive)

However, this one is a bit tricky since it can take some context to tell whether it’s the contrastive or just neutral は.

You can also think of it in terms of groupings. 今日の天気 using the の particle indicates that this phrase is a grouping. 今日は天気 indicates that 今日 and 天気 are different groups.

今日の天気はわるい - Today’s weather, (it) is bad
今日は天気がわるい - Today, (the) weather is bad

Don’t worry about it too much for now. は vs が is a tricky subject:

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