When is it okay to use あります with a living subject?

Question

When learning Japanese everyone's taught いる is for a living thing and ある is for non-living things. However, I recently saw the following sentence ... >あと、サッカー選手でもあります。 ... which ends in ある / あります for a living subject, assuming were not talking about a dead soccer player! Now the following make uses of ある sense to me: > 〜である > 〜がある > 〜にある But in my mind these adhere to the living/dead rule learned in those first Nihongo classes all those years ago. So where does もあります fit in? How should I think of this in English (equivalent phrase)?

Answer 1

ある・あります means "there is a." The only living things that work with ある・あります in this way are plants.

Your example sentence is saying "Also, he is a soccer player too." である・であります is a copula a lot like だ・です, but with different usage, usually formal speech or writing. If one being is two things, we need to use でもあります.

Nicole is Japanese and American (i.e.: she is a dual citizen): ニコールはアメリカ人でも、日本人でもあります。