な and が

3 comments

1. This question doesn’t make any sense? What do な and が have to do with each other, they’re unrelated parts of speech. Do you mean は and が? As always, an example or context would be helpful.

2. > I’ve been spending the past couple days trying to figure these out, reading so many articles and past Reddit posts on the topic and yet nothing seems to get me closer to understanding it, just more confusion. Hopefully my explanation of it is close to what it actually is.

   My advice is to just take the explanations at face value and **stop trying to get a perfect understanding** of it. You literally cannot. It’s an incredibly nuanced topic that will keep bouncing against your brain over and over and over without taking roots until you get used to it intuitively. You got your “face value” explanation, now all you need to do is to just spend time reading a lot of Japanese (immersion, etc) until you see は and が used literally **a million times** in context. You should focus on understanding the general **meaning** of the sentences you read and then move on. Your brain will literally figure out the rest automatically (because that’s what it’s made for). Don’t try to get a perfect understanding of grammar by breaking down sentences in their individual components, just get a general rule (even if inaccurate/imprecise/imperfect) to unlock the meaning of what you read, and then start reading.

   You will never move forward if you keep asking for a comprehensive and perfect resource or explanation for は vs が because it simply doesn’t exist. You need to experience it.

3. One insightful はvs が thing I read once was thatが generally puts the emphasis on the word to the left, where は puts more focus on the stuff to the right.

   E.g.
   what did you eat?
   私はサンドを食べました = I ate _a sandwich_.

   Who ate a sandwich?
   私がサンドを食べました = _I_ ate a sandwich.

   Im sure that only captures a fraction of the potential nuances, but I felt it was a great tip.