My learning program gave me this sentence:

> 私 は 彼女 の 考え 方 に 就いて 興味 が 有り ます。

Translated as "I'd be interested to know what she thinks."

However i've been lead to believe that should be imasu at the end and no
arimasu, as the person is in reference here.

Is it just one of those "rules" that isn't really that important in real life?
If not, can someone explain why it was used here?

thanks!
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2020-07-25T23:47:58.397
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2020-07-26T04:12:06.650
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question
grammar
Arimasu is used for things that aren't living. are there exceptions to this?
いる vs ある maybe a fictitious character on a TV screen is いる (Mickey Mouse) ,
but a stuffed animal of the character... may be either, are we pretending it
is alive (with a young kid) could go either way.

Other than that, if it is alive and animated = いる ＜＝＞ not animated = ある

よし！
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2020-07-26T00:02:47.157
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> 私 **は** 彼女の考え方について興味 **が** あります。

Although this sentence is usually translated as "I'm interested in ～" with "I"
as the subject, the grammatical subject of the original sentence is **not** 私.
A very literal translation of this sentence is:

> As for me, **interest exists** regarding her way of thinking.

As you can see, the subject of あります is 興味, not 私 nor 考え方. Of course 興味 is an
inanimate object. In other words, this sentence is about the existence of
someone's interest, not about the existence of someone ("me" = 私). Since this
sentence is not about where I am or whether I exist, you cannot use いる here.

Japanese is a [topic-prominent
language](https://eastasiastudent.net/study/topic-prominent/), and one
sentence can have both a は-marked **topic** and a が-marked **subject**. You
may have learned this fact using a sentence like 彼は背が高い ("He is tall") or
ゾウは鼻が長い ("An elephant has a long nose"). Please keep in mind that the subject
is 背 and 鼻, respectively, no matter how this type of sentence is usually
translated into English.
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