Which one is the correct one between the following 2 sentences? Are my English
translations correct?

> A: 昨日食べたのは肉まん **です** 。
>
> A': It **is** nikuman (steamed meat bun) that I ate yesterday.
>
> B: 昨日食べたのは肉まん **でした** 。
>
> B': It **was** nikuman (steamed meat bun) that I ate yesterday.

Note: I am not a native speaker in both English and Japanese.
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question
grammar tense cleft-sentences
Confused in choosing でした or です in のは～だ grammar
Both A and B in Japanese are correct, the same fact as A' in English. B' is
incorrect English. Do you want to know about English?
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answer
As Toshihiko wrote, both A and B are correct sentences in Japanese. However,
they are not always interchangeable.

For example, suppose that you ate nikuman yesterday, but today your coworker
asked you:

> 昨日カレーまんを食べていましたよね。どこで買ったんですか? _You were eating karēman (curry-flavored pork
> bun) yesterday. Where did you buy it?_

You can say (A) いいえ、昨日食べたのは肉まんです in response, but it is strange to say (B)
いいえ、昨日食べたのは肉まんでした. It is hard for me to pinpoint why (B) sounds strange in
this case, but I feel that (B) emphasizes the pastness of the event for no
reason even though you are making a correction now.
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2015-11-18T19:34:46.497
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answer
The key here is the word order. The neutral order is “昨日肉まんを食べました”. By saying
it in the order “昨日食べたのは肉まん[です/でした]”, you are already conveying a
**contrastive** nuance. That is to say, you ate 肉まん and **not something
else**.

です/でした tends to have implications on this contrastive nuance:

> 昨日食べたのは肉まん **です** 。ラーメンではなくて。  
>  _It was nikuman that I ate yesterday. Not ramen._
>
> 昨日食べたのは肉まん **でした** 。ラーメンではなくて。  
>  _**It turns out** it was nikuman that I ate yesterday. Not ramen._

Using `でした` can imply that you are overturning a previous belief or statement.
You previously thought/said it was ramen, but it turned out to be nikuman.

So for example, these are the natural choices:

  * 先に帰ってきたのはお父さん **です** 。  
_It was my father who came home first._

  * お母さんが先に帰ってくるはずだったのに、先に帰ってきたのはお父さん **でした** 。  
_My mother was supposed to come home first, but it turned out to be my father
who came home first._
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answer