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!
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, 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.
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！
