Why is で used in 「大英雄が無職で何が悪い」


> 大英雄が無職で何が悪い

(What's wrong with a great hero being unemployed) (?)

I think understand the meaning of the sentence but I equate the "で" with the
English "with", rather than think about why で is specifically used here. How
different would it be if は was used instead of で? What's the nuance of this で?




> 大英雄が無職で何が悪い。  
>  A great hero is unemployed, and what's wrong (with that)?  
>  A great hero being unemployed, is there anything wrong?

This で is _not_ the particle で which usually means "with (a tool)", "by (a
method)", "at (a place)", etc.

This で is the [te-form of the Japanese plain copula
だ](http://www.japaneseprofessor.com/reference/grammar/conjugations-of-the-
japanese-copula/). It's the same で found in "私は学生 **で** 、あなたは会社員です" and
"今日は日曜日 **で** 学校は休みだ". The te-form is used to [denote a reason/cause of the
following clause](http://www.learn-japanese-adventure.com/te-form-cause-
reason.html) in the original sentence, so it's not possible to split it into
two sentences.

大英雄が無職は何が悪い would not be grammatical because "大英雄が無職" does not form a noun
phrase. Well, it's possible to [use こと to turn it to a noun
phrase](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/1395/5010) and say:

> 大英雄が無職 **であること** は何が悪い。  
>  What's wrong with a great hero being unemployed?

...although this still looks a bit awkward. You can say 大英雄が無職であること **の**
何が悪い, where の is used to link two nouns (大英雄が無職であること and 何).

