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In a language exercise, I was supposed to write the following in Japanese:
"Please close the window." Intuitively, I thought, since 窓 is the direct
object of 閉めて, then probably

窓を閉めてください

I found out the correct answer is:

窓は閉めてください。

My question is, is 窓を閉めてください a grammatical sentence at all? If it is, then
does it mean something different from 窓は閉めてください?

Further on in the same exercise, I came across another sentence:

その窓を閉めてください

I thought, strange, why is it now を and not は? So now my other question is: is
その窓は閉めてください grammatical? And if it is, does it mean something different from
その窓を閉めてください?

May I add that it's an online exercise, so I had no teacher to ask. Thanks for
helping.
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2021-06-08T23:11:40.133
86997
2021-06-09T06:56:23.047
2021-06-09T00:39:57.980
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question
particle-は particle-を
Question on particles は and を
窓を閉めてください is perfectly correct and natural as the translation of "Please close
the window." If there is no other context, there is nothing wrong with your
translation.

窓は閉めてください is also a perfectly grammatical sentence, but its meaning is
different, because 窓 is now _topicalized_ using は. Note that は is a _topic_
particle, and it can replace both が and を. In other words, 窓 is still the
direct object of 閉める, but を is "masked" by the topic marker は. Since 窓 is
topicalized, this sentence is now about the window itself; the speaker wants
to state a fact, a rule or something regarding this window. A very literal
translation is "As for the window, please close [it]". A sentence like this
implies you have to always close this window (e.g., at the end of a day), and
you have to remember this as a rule.

To summarize, if the original English sentence is a simple one-time request,
窓を閉めてください is correct. If the original English sentence is presented as a rule
to remember, 窓は閉めてください is also correct.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-06-09T06:56:23.047
87003
2021-06-09T06:56:23.047
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answer