Learning that there is no word for “it” was one of the biggest challenges for me when I first started learning Japanese.
In English, there is never an implied subject (grammatically speaking), unlike in many other languages.
I don’t know if this helps explain it to him, but it could help him to understand the concept. Verbs always need a subject, and if you contextually know what that subject is, you can use “it” (or he, her, etc) instead of being more specific.
“Raining” could be a full sentence in some languages, but in English, you need to specify that the weather is raining, but we can just say “it is raining”.
I’m a little surprised that your boyfriend didn’t learn this while he was learning the language. Did he self-learn? Going through a book on English grammar might be helpful for him.
Technically doesn’t です・だ serve a similar purpose to “it is” in this case. I’m not a native speaker but does it sound a bit strange if someone were to just say 雨? You would usually say 雨だ right? While it’s not the same as “it”, in this usage, だ・です is closer to the meaning of “is” so it’s kinda similar?
That said, the absence of a concept of “it” in Japanese has never occurred to me so that was an interesting revelation. I am also a native Mandarin speaker which doesn’t really have an “it” either so maybe that’s why.
Learning that there is no word for “it” was one of the biggest challenges for me when I first started learning Japanese.
In English, there is never an implied subject (grammatically speaking), unlike in many other languages.
I don’t know if this helps explain it to him, but it could help him to understand the concept. Verbs always need a subject, and if you contextually know what that subject is, you can use “it” (or he, her, etc) instead of being more specific.
“Raining” could be a full sentence in some languages, but in English, you need to specify that the weather is raining, but we can just say “it is raining”.
I’m a little surprised that your boyfriend didn’t learn this while he was learning the language. Did he self-learn? Going through a book on English grammar might be helpful for him.
Don’t tell me English has no implied subjects!
Imperative commands and questions in English can have implied subjects.
Technically doesn’t です・だ serve a similar purpose to “it is” in this case. I’m not a native speaker but does it sound a bit strange if someone were to just say 雨? You would usually say 雨だ right? While it’s not the same as “it”, in this usage, だ・です is closer to the meaning of “is” so it’s kinda similar?
That said, the absence of a concept of “it” in Japanese has never occurred to me so that was an interesting revelation. I am also a native Mandarin speaker which doesn’t really have an “it” either so maybe that’s why.