Is there a rule to know what the topic of a sentence should be?
I have no problem understanding how topics are used in a sentence in Japanese, but I have trouble using them myself
I know a topic is “the general subject of conversation” but it’s still unclear. Do japanese people just use the first thing that goes through their mind as the topic of what they are going to say (like, before they even know exactly what they are going to say, they state the topic right away)?
6 comments
Particles establish the topic.
How did you determine the topic in all of the sentences you wrote in this post? Same answer.
The reason you can’t do this yet is cause you still have to think about it in Japanese. Natives don’t.
What?
It’s like explaining how we don’t have to think after every word in our native language. Natives just know what is what. That’s something you can’t really explain so easily because they used that language their whole life.
Have a look at [https://youtu.be/9l_ZlQQU4ZE](https://youtu.be/9l_ZlQQU4ZE) – see if that helps you understand what a topic is. That should help you in choosing topics.
It is similar to what can be referred to using ‘it’ or using ‘the xxxx’. The speaker assumes the topic/ what is being talked about is shared. How do you do that?