Is "カバンに本があります" correct?


I asked 2 Japanese teachers (native speakers both) whether the sentence
"カバンに本があります" was correct in Japanese. Surprisingly, one claimed it is
perfectly fine, while the other claimed it is wrong, and should be
"カバンのなかに本があります" or "カバンに本が入っています" instead.

Questions:

  1. Which answer is correct?
  2. How can such a basic sentence lead to such radically opposed answers?




At best I can guess what's going on with your teachers. (Caveat, I'm a
nonnative speaker.)

I think most people will understand you quite well if you say, カバンに本があります.

However, from the perspective of the other teacher, different ideas might be
going through their head. In English, we have somewhat specific prepositions
to make clear what we mean. We can say "there's a book in the bag". That
corresponds to カバンの中に本があります。We can also say "there's a book on the bag"
(imagine that bag is placed on a table and you placed the book on top of it).
This would correspond to カバンの上に本があります。

This last sentence, in English, might sound a little bit weird. It's not what
you necessarily expect to hear (you expect to hear "in"). So, if your student
(pretending we're teaching English) said, "there's a book on the bag", you
might correct them to say "there's a book on top of the bag". Why? Because
depending on one's native language, someone might say "on" when they should
really be saying "in". Or, you, as the teacher, have an unconscious bias for
expressing this idea in a particular way.

I suspect that, if you meant, "there's a book on the bag", it would be better
to say, カバンの上に本があります。 But, even if you said, カバンに本があります, and the person you're
speaking to can see there's a book on the bag, you'll be understood.

I get it, you're not asking about カバンの上に. But, I am trying to tease out why
two native speakers might have different ideas of the best way to instruct the
student.

