Pi Pi's Splashtown

#1

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?

#2

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

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.

#4

「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.”

#5

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.

#6

“As for the pool, it’s full of people” … how do you come to “people are full”?

#7

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

#8

Thanks guys. Good explanations.

And of course the pool is the subject - dumb oversight by me.

#9

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

#10

Either works. The nuance is subtle. To the point of really not mattering at all.

#11

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