How do you translate "My hovercraft is full of eels"?


The good old nonsense phrase of foreign languages is Monty Python's classic
"My hovercraft is full of eels".

Accordingly in Japanese one of the first things I learned was
"私のホバークラフトはうなぎがいっぱいです".

However, today I have been told that this is wrong, that I should in fact be
using "私のホバークラフトはうなぎ **で** いっぱいです"

Can anyone shed some light on this? Does the first one truly make no sense (as
far as the sentence can make sense anyway)?

Why is it で and not が?




> 私のホバークラフトはうなぎ **が** いっぱいです _Eels abound in my hovercraft._  
>  私のホバークラフトはうなぎ **で** いっぱいです _My hovercraft is filled with eels._

Thus, the latter sentence should be used to express your original English.
I've found [this
page](http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/hovercraft.htm) translates it
in the same way, too.

いっぱい literally means "full", but only used in this sense with the construction
`A が B でいっぱい` "A is filled with B" or "A is full of B". It has another usage
`X が Y にいっぱい`, in turn means "X abounds in Y" or "X is everywhere in Y".

As a native speaker, I can't help but imagine a hovercraft fully decorated
with eel-motif carvings and accessories with `ホバークラフトはうなぎがいっぱい`, before I
reach the correct interpretation.

If you'd like to rephrase it with eel + が, you'd say:

> 私のホバークラフトはうなぎがいっぱい **入っています**

But it doesn't necessarily mean that hovercraft is literally _full_ , while
`うなぎでいっぱい` always does.

