Japanese 180 - Using は to indicate possession instead of の

One way to express the sentence Yuko's eyes are big in Japanese would beゆこさんのおおきいです, which is perfectly acceptable. However, using the particle , we could write the sentence without the possessive particle like this: ゆこさんはおおきいです.

In the latter sentence, which sounds more natural in Japanese, we do not have to directly specify that the big eyes are Yuko's. It is inferred that they belong to her because she is the topic of the sentence.

The table below includes more examples of this pattern using instead of .

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