Hello!
As with probably a lot of others here, I'm currently learning Japanese through duolingo, and I feel uninformed on how to properly identify the topic of a sentence, and therefore struggling to figure out where to place the wa (は).
An example of a sentence I just had trouble with is "Where is that?". I understand that the structure of this sentence would be ___ は ___ ですか, but how do I know which is the topic out of "where" (どこ) and "that" (それ)?
I assumed that どこ was the topic since the goal of the sentence is to locate something, but it turned out to be それ. I can completely see how それ would be considered the topic here, but my problem is at it doesn't seem immediately obvious to me why どこ isn't the topic here. How can I consistently identify the topic of a sentence in situations where it isn't super obvious. So far I've had no problem translating sentences from Japanese to english, but when it's the other way, I always feel like I'm playing a guessing game trying to figure out how to identify the topic.
Any help, would be greatly appreciated!
by PotetPerson