Confused Beginner Japanses

8 comments

1. Short answer: technically yes

   Long answer: technically yes, but it’s a little more complicated

   I think you might want to look into the difference between topics vs subjects in Japanese! (Just looking up “topic vs subjects Japanese” on Google led to a few results)

   I think those results could explain better than I can

2. To my understanding *ga* is more for linking a subject to an action verb while the w*a* is more intended to direct attention to a subject.

   それ**は**水です That is water. (This is pointing out some water)

   私これは水**が**飲みます I’m drinking this water. (This is linking water to the act of drinking)

   This is my understanding and I am also not very far into my journey so I’d recommend fact checking me on this. Hope this was helpful!

   **Edit:** *Turns out my above understanding was wrong! I have a looooooong way to go and am glad to have a community that helps each other.*

3. Im gonna attempt to explain this but it’s a little complicated so anyone feel free to correct me if I’m getting things wrong. I’ve been studying at a japanese language school for about 4 months now but this is still not super clear.

   Anyway, as far as I understand it, at the most basic level:

   は is the topic marker. It marks the topic of a sentence.
   が is the subject marker. It marks the subject of a sentence.

   A lot of the time, the topic is also the subject of the sentence. In which case the topic marker is often preferred as far as I’ve seen. Like in the case それは水です. それ is the topic and subject and so は takes priority.

   But then you have sentences like (私は)猫が好きです。 meaning “I like cats”.

   Liking things in japanese is a little different than in english but you can think of the sentence saying “As for me, cats are liked”. Kind of.

   In this case, 私 is the topic of the sentence and is as such marked by は. 猫 is the subject of the sentence and is thus marked by が. Since they are different we specify the subject of the sentence with the subject marker. The topic can often be omitted when it is clear from context. Otherwise it must be specified.

   This is the most basic explanantion I can come up with right now. There is a lot of nuance and it can get very complicated when we start talking about potential forms and transitive/intransitive verbs. But thats mainly complicated because those grammatical parts often change when you translate to english. Topics become subjects, subjects become objects, it can seem very arbitrary. My best suggestion for learning when to use which is to simply read a lot of example sentences. Lots of practice is, as always, the answer.

4. それは水です。 That is water. (generic on specifying what is “that”)

   それが水です。 THAT, is water (emphasis on specifying what/which is “water”)

5. Ooh boy.

   は is the topic marker. It basically either marks the topic of the whole context or shines a spotlight on another topic while keeping the original topic.

   Try to translate the following three sentences to get a better feel for it:

   象は鼻が長い: Elephants have long noses.

   私はうなぎだ: I’ll have the eel.

   こんにゃくは太らない: Konjac doesn’t make you fat.

   ​

   が is the subject marker and usually the role it plays is only within the confines of the sentence it’s in, unless it’s being used to start a story.

   ​

   I’m in the camp of Japanese not needing subjects per se for their sentences (sorry, Chomsky).

6. Reason number one not to use duolingo as your main source while learning is that they don’t really explain grammatical stuff.

   At a low level they um *usually* mean the same thing. Just that i think duolingo will fairly soon introduce sentences with both. So a vastly simplified explanation is that wa is the topic of the entire sentence, the thing under discussion, and ga is the subject of the verb phrase, linked directly to the verb or adjective.

   (Topics are necessary in Japanese sentences though often go unstated in context.)

7. Please use absolutely anything other than Duolingo. It’s all right for learning vocabulary, but utter crap for everything else.

8. 1. That’s water.
   2. That’s the water.