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In my textbook I have a sentence 「私の町は小さく、住んでいる人は30万人以下です」 I have a couple of
questions on this.. At first glance I thought this meant “living small” as in
the opposite of “living large” but I can’t see a textbook using that kind of
language? Also why does this sentence use 2 は’s instead of 1 は and a が?

(Edit) Just realized the 小さく has a comma after it and since it’s written I’m
assuming the 小さく means 小さくて、!

As for the double は part of anyone can help!

Feel free to use examples. Thank you!!
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2020-07-02T10:30:47.213
78354
2020-07-02T14:17:42.267
2020-07-02T11:26:41.550
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question
grammar meaning translation
小さく住んでいる meaning
> 私の町は小さく、

The first sentence uses「は」to introduce a new topic, with the added emphasis
that it concerns the speaker's home town specifically. As you pointed out
yourself, the construction 「小さく、」is a different way to write 「小さくて、」which
helps the listener prepare for more information related to 「私の町」.

> 住んでいる人は30万人以下です。

For the second part of the sentence, the topic becomes 「（私の町に）住んでいる人」.
However, the particle「は」is used over「が」because it concerns information that's
already shared between the speaker and the listener (i.e. information _about_
the speaker's town). In [this
answer](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/78335/39516) I try to explain the
nuance between 「は」and「が」when they're used after the subject of a sentence.

Another possibly confusing aspect about this sentence could be the fact that
「人」which is generally taught to mean "person" or "people," suddenly refers to
a population. In English, you might expect a more explicit wording such as
"the number of people" as opposed to just "people."

The thing is that「住んでいる人」does indeed refer to _people who live in my town_ ,
but that the second 「人」in「３０万人」is the **counter** for people, something that
doesn't really exist in English. So what you would express as "the number of
people" in English, is actually engrained in the usage of a counter in
Japanese.
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2020-07-02T12:28:23.640
78358
2020-07-02T12:28:23.640
39516
78354
answer