I just started learning particles and got kinda confused about wa and ga. But I think I get it now, below I wrote a simple example of what I think the differences are between the 2. Will someone please let me know if I understood correctly and maybe give me a few examples of more complex sentences?
This is my dog.
If I use wa particle after ‘this’ it means that I’m emphasizing that ‘this’ is my dog. It is probably already known that there IS a dog but ‘this’ being my dog is the new information
If I use ga particle after ‘this’ it means emphasizing that this my ‘dog’. It is probably already known that there is something, but the ‘something’ being a dog is new information. So even though the sentence would literally translate to ‘As for this, it is my dog.’ which means you first start speaking about ‘this’, the ‘this’ being a ‘dog’ is still more important than the ‘dog’ being ‘this’.
3 comments
Watch the [first three videos in this series](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06WlhnypWj) (about 24 mins total) – *and then watch some more if you liked it.*
By no means a は/が expert, but I think it would be more like は is “as for this, it is my dog” and が is like “This is the one that is my dog.” が marks the subject.
For another example:
私は先生です。(As for me, I am a teacher.) This would be an appropriate answer to the question “what do you do”/“who are you”.
私が先生です。(I am the teacher.) This would be an appropriate answer to “who is the teacher” but not the questions listed for は.
Watch Cure Dolly’s grammar videos and then forget the question and move on learning Japanese