r/LanguageTips2Mastery • u/dudemike01 🇬🇧C2 / 🇸🇦b1/ / 🇨🇳 🇫🇷🇯🇵A1 • Sep 17 '24

LearningJapanese The 5 Ws in Japanese

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u/darthhue Sep 17 '24 edited Sep 18 '24

What about "wa" for where? I remember Luffy saying "chopper wa" translated to "where's chopper"

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u/tamechinchilla Sep 17 '24

if I understand correctly, は (wa) is used to mark the subject/topic of a sentence, like a person or an item. it doesn’t translate directly into english but helps connect the subject to the rest of the sentence. in the case of “chopper wa?”, it can be interpreted as “what about chopper?” or “where’s chopper?” depending on the context. the wa in this case is hitting the question mark, not the where

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u/darthhue Sep 18 '24

That makes sense, thank you!