how to distinguish が and を？

5 comments

1. The dog is doing the thing, so the dog is the subject, so it’s が.

   If the sentence used を, it would mean that the dog is the object of the sentence. That something was being done **to** the dog for instance.

2. >が is used to specify THE child

   That’s not what が does. There is no “the” or equivalent function in the Japanese language. You need to learn what function particles serve in the Japanese language rather than try to compare them to English.

   It’s difficult to explain what が does and someone else can do it better, so I’ll leave it to someone else.

   But を is simpler – its main use is to mark the object of a verb. For example ケーキを食べた – I ate a cake. “Cake” is the object of the verb “to eat.” In Japanese, を follows ケーキ to indicate that.

   In your first sentence, 犬が走っている, the verb is 走る, to run. 走る is not a transitive verb, i.e. it is a verb without an object, so any を usage in the sentence would be incorrect.

3. を is used for a direct object, and as such can really only be used with transitive verbs. The dog can only run, it can’t *be* run. You can cry *tears,* but you can’t cry a *kid* lol.

   が can also sometimes be used for direct objects for stuff like to distinguish them as a selected choice among multiple options. Generally が is used like that for both subjects and objects, to draw emphasis in the sentence of what it’s attached to as an operator.

   But like I mentioned, for the examples you give neither of those things is an object. 私の犬に骨をくれました “I gave my dog a bone.” 骨 is the object of action and as such uses を. Say there was an option where you could have given the dog a bone or a frisbee though and you wanted to clarify which of them you gave him. Then you could go 私の犬に骨がくれました. Then it’s more like “I gave my dog *the* bone.”

   tl;dr: you are confusing the subject and object for how が and を are used. It’s only for objects that both have a possibility. For subjects it’s が vs は instead.

4. you are definitely going to want to understand the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs because, が works differently for them as does を

   for trans verbs, が is who is doing it and を is usually what they are doing it to

   for intrans, が is who is doing it and who it is getting done to, they are one and the same

5. Do you know the concepts of subject vs. object?

   In an active sentence, the subject is that which acts, the object is that which is acted upon.

   In English, we do this pretty much solely by word order. If you’ve dealt with languages before, you may have come across something called SVO (in Japanese, this is SOV).SVO means the subject comes first, followed by the verb, followed by the object.

   This is why ‘the dog bites the bone’ is fine, but ‘the bone bites the dog’ feels off; getting word order right in English is ***very*** important.

   Japanese does something extra on top. The various grammatical roles are marked with particles. が marks the subject, while を marks the object. Throw into that SOV order, and the previous sentence becomes 犬が骨を噛む.

   This has two effects in Japanese. First, it means you can drop bits which are obvious, usually the subject. Where we replace apparent subjects with pronouns, the Japanese often drop the subject entirely. It also means you have some leeway on word order. 骨を犬が噛む, though unusual, is still easily understood.

   TL;DR: [subject](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject_(grammar)) vs. [object](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_(grammar)), が is subject, を is (direct) object