A question about a sentence from the 2K/6K anki deck:
プールは人で一杯です
Why 人で and not 人が?
I’m sure someone else will explain it better but は/が are topic/subject markers and で can have the meaning of by/via or even “because of” which can sound really weird in English but if you think of it as “The pool is full because of people” … yeah hopefully someone else can phrase it better. Some things just don’t translate literally, but I tried. Using 人が in this situation would be confusing, I think it would give the impression the pool and/or people were full but wouldn’t say what they were full of.
3 Likes
Yeah, I realize brawnhilda already said it, but yeah.
いっぱい can mean “a lot”, which is how I think you’re trying to read the sentence, but it also has the meaning of “full”. So in this case, the いっぱい is describing the pool, not the people, so 人 doesn’t get a が. How is it filled up? With people. 人で.
プールは人がいっぱいです is a sentence that is grammatically correct. It just means something different.
3 Likes
「プールは人が一杯です」kind of sounds like you would be saying “As for the pool, people are full.”
Does it to you? If いっぱい applies to 人, the obvious interpretation would be “a lot.”
プールは人がいっぱいです would be “there are a lot of people in the pool.” Fairly unambiguously I’d say.
“As for the pool, it’s full of people” … how do you come to “people are full”?
Oops sorry, you guys are right and it would be more like “As for the pool, there are many people.” Haha, too sleepy for this
Thanks guys. Good explanations.
And of course the pool is the subject - dumb oversight by me.
so if you were to use が instead of で would you have to use いる instead of です or is it like an either/or thing with different implications
Either works. The nuance is subtle. To the point of really not mattering at all.
This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.