たくはない vs. たくない

[KyleGoetz]

Having only lived in Japan a year and no longer speaking Japanese on a daily basis, I have little means to pick up on the subtleties of the language anymore (sadly). Thus, I register (to hopefully stay) and come to you, Japan Forum, to help me.

I've seen both 食べたくはない and 食べたくない. What is the difference between them? My best guess is that 食べたくはない is the "correct" formal version, and 食べたくない is a variant that is used most often nowadays in less-than-formal situations. Perhaps how most people use だから but in formal speeches you would use したがって?

Are there other times when this sort of は-insertion occurs in between forms? I realize that, technically speaking, 食べたくない is not one word, but two, the conjunctive root 食べたく and the negative of ある, ない. This is what makes the は-insertion linguistically cromulent, right?

Thanks!

Edit: The only thing I can figure is that, since one use of は is to use in two phrases next to each other for contrast, e.g.:
私はアメリカ人だけど、キムさんは韓国人だ。
Thus, I'm guessing maybe you need the は if you are contrasting what you don't want to do with the fact that you have to or something.

So, maybe 食べたくはない has an implied continuation of けど、食べなければならない?

[Nagoyankee]

Wow, you found an answer to your own question at the very end of the post! When we say 食べたくはない, what we mean is "If I could have it MY way, I wouldn't want to eat.". "If I could be honest with my own feeling, I wouldn't want to eat....at least not now. But I will have a piece because it took Mary hours to cook the pie."

What you said in paragraph #2 is not quite correct. It has nothing to do with being formal/informal. You cannot really express either formality or informality with particles. We mostly do it with the verb endings.

[KyleGoetz]

Thanks, Nagoyankee. In para. 2, I was really trying to draw some sort of similarity between the inclusion/exclusion of は as "formality" in the same way you can informally say 食べたことない in speech but would say 食べたことガない to be "correct."

I didn't really mean it in a する／します way. But point taken.

And thanks for clearing up the point for me on what the は actually adds to the structure. Occasionally I find things that I don't quite get and need someone to ask. As I'm busy with grad school, I don't have a chance to go out and find Japanese people to ask anymore.