So I just watched a video from CureDolly in which she said that in fact, in the following two sentences, the particle ga should be used, whereas in English (or German, which is my mother tongue), it would be an object, not a subject. (Don’t know how to type Japanese characters on my computer)
(1) (Watashi ha) kureppu ga sukida.
(2) (Watashi ha) hon ga wakaru.
Then I stumbled upon this sentence:
(3) Watashi ha mainichi koohii wo nomimasu.
And now, I am confused. Is it ga in the first sentence because it is a “A is B.” sentence and in the second because wakaru is an intransitive verb, and in the third it is wo because nomu is transitive? (the question to wo is: Whom was it done to? – the drinking was done to the coffee, but the understanding can not be done to the book?)
I am a little confused. Can someone explain when the cases CD described in her video (Japanese from scratch part 9) can be used? I.e. use the ga particle to mark, what in the english translation at least, would be the object of the sentence?
2 comments
While patterns do exist the important thing is to learn what particles go with which verbs and in which sentence patterns. There’s no one universal rule that will cover all cases. As an extremely general rule が is generally a subject or indirect object and を is a direct object. But this doesn’t account for a lot of cases that aren’t structured the same in English, or account for と or に or other constructs like として or such.
Nomu takes a direct object with を
Wakaru doesn’t. You can’t directly translate it as “understand x” but rather it works more like “x is understandable” which is why it uses が
The expected transitivity and sentence structure is not identical between English and Japanese
You use ga for suki because suki isn’t a verb, while like is.
You use ga for wakaru because it’s an indirect object. Think of it of passive knowing/understanding. If you want active knowing/understanding you use shiru.
You use wo for nomu, because you are doing drinking on the coffee.
Doa ga aku – the door opens.
The verb aku takes ga here because no one has done the act of opening to the door. It just opens. Imagine an auto-door.
Watashi wa doa wo akeru – I open the door.
The verb akeru takes wo because I am doing the act of opening to the door.