は and が’s difference cannot be understood, it has to be acquired

11 comments

1. は is topic, が is subject, makes sense to me. but then i probably acquired most of the nuances way back.

   i think the one to watch out for especially is things like adjectives and those verbs that in english (including any potential-mood verb) would be expressed as a subject-object relationship with a ‘transitive’ verb are instead expressed as topic-subject with an ‘intransitive’ verb. 好き、分かる、できる, etc.

2. > は and が’s difference cannot be understood, it has to be acquired

   > No matter how many articles or how many reddit posts you read, you’ll never get it…

   That’s true, but the same can be said for pretty much any part of the language (though the gap between conscious knowledge and internalised, intuitive understanding is indeed particularly wide in the case of something like は vs. が).

   That still doesn’t mean conscious study is pointless — on the contrary, it can accelerate acquisition by increasing the scope of highly comprehensible content. So I definitely wouldn’t advise *against* it, as you do. It’s just not strictly *necessary* either (beyond a very basic level that will give you an initial understanding to build off of and polish through input/immersion), so if you fucking despise it and it only ever feels like you’re banging your head against a wall, sure, you can afford to avoid it like the plague.

   > you’ll just end up being more confused because different people say different stuff

   Well, yes — that’s because this is a very complex puzzle with many intertwining pieces. Answers vary so much because, depending on the sentence you’re having trouble with, the piece(s) that is (are) relevant to answering your question will vary. But over a large number of answers, you’ll notice the same pieces are always brought up (placement of emphasis, old vs. new information, topic vs. subject, contrast, etc.). The different answers are not contradicting each other; they’re *complementing* each other (though sadly it’s often not made clear enough that what’s being provided is an *incomplete* explanation).

3. I don’t like this kind of mystifying around the topic. Jay Rubin’s *Making sense of Japanese* explained it to me in an intuitive way, that I’m not going to paraphrase in its entirety.

   Lets use “I went” as an example. Basically, は and が each are answers to a question. And not even required when a plain “ikimashita” would suffice, when there’s no need for emphasizing.

   >When we say “I went” in English, we’re assuming that the listener knows who the “I” is. And when we assume that our Japanese listener knows who did the verb, we just say nothing for the subject.

   *Wa* is the topic particle. It separates the topic from other possible topics, and then emphasizes onto what the sentence has to say about it. Think of it as “I don’t know of others, but **as for me**, I went.

   > *Ga* is very different, which emphasizes what comes before it. *Ga* will always be used in the answer to emphasize the information that is being asked for: “Dare **ga** ikimashita ka / Who went?” “Watashi **ga** ikimashita / I went.” or “Yamamoto-san **ga** ikimashita.

   Example questions and corresponding answers to showcase the emphasis.

   1) 行きましたか / “Did you go?”

   2) そして、山邑さんは？どうしましたか。/ “And now you, Mr. Yamamura. What did you do?”

   3) 誰が行きましたか。”Who went?”

   1) 行きました. “I went”

   2) 私は行きました。”Me? I went.”

   3) 私が行きました。”**I** went.”

4. Any other programmers here? Have you ever read an article explaining monads? I feel like it’s pretty much the same situation as は vs が haha.

   Here’s an article article about the monad situation and an analysis of why so many people think that a nuanced topic is actually simple and that *they* are the one who can explain it in a way that makes sense.

   https://byorgey.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/abstraction-intuition-and-the-monad-tutorial-fallacy/

   I think even if you don’t know programming you can understand the article and apply it to japanese.

5. I’m just starting out, so I may be oversimplifying things, but I saw a video from TokiniAndi, and he explains it this way: it depends on what you’re trying to emphasize.

   So basically:

   えりさんは猫です = Eri is a /cat/ (emphasis on cat)

   えりさんが猫です = /Eri/ is a cat (emphasis on Eri)

   Sorry about not being able to use italics, I’m on mobile. (Also formating, the paragraphs look odd when I see the comment)

   Do correct me if I’m wrong, but this is the easiest, most natural explanation I’ve been able to find and it helped me a lot.

   EDIT: Yes, sorry, I wrote cat on purpose and then got distracted and translated to dog.

6. My biggest problem isn’t は and が, it’s multiple が in the same sentence

7. It IS a super simple concept to distinguish, and the general difference in use is pretty simple. It’s just that concept/meaning/connotation of the word and usage and connotation/style are entirely different things. It depends on how cultures ended up typically expressing things because of patterns in exposure and association. Any details will always have to be acquired. Though you can make it easier by giving common patterns most aren’t conciously aware of until they see it happen. Also some are simply collocations/set phrases. We can say “we’re sitting behind/on the computer” in Dutch when we are using it. It uses the preposition”behind” or “on”. You simply have to know because that’s what caught on in usage. But it might as well have been “sitting towards”, yet that sounds wrong because that didn’t catch on.

8. what I don’t get confused over は and が and not between を and が. I mean it was easy for me to get the contextual difference between the former example but I struggled to grasp the difference of when to use が and を.

   And you’re right, you need to read and participate in conversations or at least watch videos on youtube that has those kind of situations to start drawing a line on the correct usage of those particles

9. The **meaning** of は vs が is not really that difficult.

   が is the subject marker. That’s it. Its a grammatical case marker (it marks the nominative case). The subject is the thing in the sentence that is “doing” the verb.

   は is the exclusive topic marker (in contrast with the inclusive topic marker, も). It marks the topic of the sentence and, unlike the subject, the topic is not in itself a grammatical case. Anything in the sentence can be the topic regardless of its grammatical role.

   The は particle can generally be found in a sentence in one of four ways.

   1. Attached to another particle. には, では, etc. Basically you’re just adding the context of being the topic to whatever the particle is marking. Now what that means depends on the particle and the sentence, and I’m not going to go into that in detail since we’re talking about は vs. が.
   2. Replacing another particle. Specifically が and を. To other particles, the は gets attached, with が and を, the は particle replaces them. When this happens you can think of the は as an “enhanced” version of the particle its replacing. So は and が aren’t really at odds with each other. When は takes the place of が, the が doesn’t really go away, it’s more like it gets absorbed by the は. So if が is the plain subject marker, は is the enhanced subject marker (when it replaces が). So if you see a は marking the subject, pretend that the が is still there and is just being hidden by the は. And its the same when は replaces を.
   3. は can sometimes be found in a sentence on its own, not attached to another particle, but also not replacing が or を. Sometimes there can be two of them, one replacing a が (or を), the other on its own. In this case, its usually being used to contrast something with something else.

   But there is some truth to the OP’s post. There is a major “don’t think, just feel” aspect of は vs が. That has less to do with the actual function of the particles themselves and more to do with knowing the difference between a plain subject and a topicalized subject and when to use one or the other.

   Just think about English.

   The sentences “My name is Joshua” and “As for me, my name is Joshua” both mean the exact same thing. In the first, Joshua is just the plain subject. In the second, the “as for me” sets Joshua aside as the exclusive topic, in addition to being the subject.

   So when do you use one or other? There’s no clear answer for that. It depends on the conversation, what you’re trying to convey, etc. In English “As for me, my name is Joshua” is cumbersome and probably would not be used, but not all languages are the same and what’s cumbersome in English may be perfectly normal in Japanese.

   So really, the difference between は vs が in terms of function isn’t hard, but knowing when to use one or the other kind of is, and its really just going to come down to practice and language familiarity. 90% of the time you can use either and it will still be grammatically correct.

   There are some rules of thumb, though. A major one being that は tends to be more formal. You rarely hear は being used in very casual, familiar speech. A lot of times the subject will be dropped entirely in casual speech, but when it does come up it seems like you’re much more likely to hear the plain subject が than the more formal は.

   You also need to take も into consideration, too. Sometimes the difference between は and も can be just as complex, especially since you can accidentally offend someone when using the wrong one. I’ve seen a lot Japanese comedy bits where someone offended someone because they used は and instead of も. One was a commercial where a man’s wife made him udon and he said “うどんはおいしい.” and she responded with “Haaaa!? What do you mean は?!” Because は is the exclusive topic marker, the implication was that only this udon was good, and not any other other udons she had made in the past. If you’re familiar with VTubers, one of Hoshimachi Suisei’s greetings is “すいちゃんは~~~!” and then you’re supposed to respond with “きょうもかわいい!” You definitely don’t want to say きょうは instead きょうも as that would imply that only today, and not other days, does Suisei look cute.

   A lot of new learners don’t understand this nuance, and that は implies exclusivity.

10. Kinda love that people still can’t help themselves trying to explain it even in a thread that is highlighting the fact that it can only be fully acquired through experience

11. May I suggest you watch CureDolly’s video(s) on this (the hidden が particle)

    The way I understand it:
    は – introduce a topic AND make it the subect ( hidden が: 猫は[猫が]好き )
    が – specify the subject
    は+が – introduce a topic then specify the subject