Hi! Asking for a friend who’s studying Japanese, why is there no “ha”(wa) after Australia?

8 comments

1. Australia isn’t the topic of the sentence. The topic is an unstated “I” (although, without context, the topic could be someone or something else – for example, if someone said this while pointing to a kangaroo at a zoo in Tokyo, it would mean “That kangaroo came from Australia” and “that kangaroo” would be the topic).

2. The は denotes the topic of the sentence, which in this case is “I”, inferred via context. (*I* come from Australia.) If you wanted to be super clear, you would say:

   わたしはオーストラリアから来ました

   But if you’re talking about yourself you can usually omit the わたしは. So as topic is inferred, no は is needed.

3. Your friend can’t afford a Reddit account?

4. ~~Just another thing seems no one has mentioned: there’s already a particle から (“from”) after オーストラリア. Each noun should have exactly one particle, so you can’t add another particle は here.~~

   Edit: I was wrong. See replies below.

5. Others have answered the question. So I just wanted to add that if your friend wants to gain a better understanding of particles like “wa” and when to use them, I recommend this playlist:

   [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSvH9vH60Ig&list=PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06WlhnypWj](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSvH9vH60Ig&list=PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06WlhnypWj)

   That Youtube channel has been the single best Japanese learning resource I’ve come across, and makes a lot of the more complicated-seeming elements of the language make a lot more sense.

6. Another way to think of it is there’s only going to be one particle attached to a verb/noun/adjective/sentence. In this case with “Australia”, the particle “kara” is already attached, so you wouldn’t add another.

7. duolingo also isn’t a good tool to learn japanese, it’s decent for practising but not for learning

8. 「私は私が」オーストラリアから来ました。

   私 is the topic and technically the subject. Not オーストラリア

   As for me (は), I (が) came Australia (から来ました)