Started reading kindle version of “Unlocking Japanese” by **Cure Dolly** (AKA Advanced Linguistic Intelligence Computational Engine 1.5, or イチゴ・アリス) . I am a longtime beginner in Japanese and I ran into “wa/ga” conundrum many times.
Edit: Than you for all the comments – I am not advanced enough in my knowledge of Japanese to comment but I appreciate them and I am reading them. The interesting part of the story to me is when Curry Dolly mentions the cultural difference – the bias in Western culture for the human agent to assume the active role – as a reason why there is preference to structure the information transfer in a specific way. In my limited scope of knowledge about Japanese I often find it interesting how the order of parts of a sentence reflects on efficient transfer of information. Or even at the way people communicate. My native language is Polish – it is very heavily inflexed (if that is a proper term) – every word must be rendered in proper grammatical form may also depend if action was completed – or may depend on preposition. Basically complete grammatical nitemare. But on a flipside – order of words is immaterial – you always can id subject, object by their grammatical form. And very often you can understand the information half way through. Which – to some extent – leads to people being able to interrupt each other more easily than in most other languages – with much of a penalty for loss of information.
7 comments
im a big cure dolly fan but i think even with her explanations wa vs ga is just not an understandable thing
[I saved this comment from a year ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/kkfnnz/%E3%81%AF_wa_vs_%E3%81%8C_ga_finally_makes_sense/gh4yeek/) to remind me that there are no concrete rules when it comes to this stuff. It’s best not to dive too deeply into it and just figure it out over time.
In my experience you can figure the difference out with practice and exposure to the language. I passed over that meme like 6 months ago.
I mean only beginners see a big deal there because they want to understand EVERYTHING in a few months a with japanese that will never be the case
I watched a bunch of Cure Dolly, but unfortunately, I had a native speaker tell me some of her information is wrong.
は/が isn’t all that difficult to my understanding.
は is for making a general statement, and が is for identifying what you’re talking about.
The example that I was told by a Japanese person is this:
Nice to meet you, I am Daniel.
始めまして、私「は」ダニエルです。
You are introducing your name into the conversation.
Think of it like “Nice to meet you. As for me, I am Daniel.”
ーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーー
Now, imagine you’re waiting at the doctor’s, and the receptionist calls for you.
Where is Mr. Daniel?
ダニエルさんはどこですか？
I am Daniel!
私「が」ダニエルです！
You are identifying yourself as Daniel, as opposed to the other people in the room.
Think of this like “*I* am Daniel!”
ーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーーー
Hopefully that makes sense.
In my experience though, it doesn’t make all that much of a difference 90% of the time. Just use は when introducing yourself and you should be able to figure out the rest through experience.
My Japanese is pretty bad, mainly due to a lack of trying to get good, but I’ve put a lot thought and research into は and が many years ago. Note that this comment is largely just my personal opinion from my own observations though, rather than purely reiterating research. There no simple answer to は vs が, but here’s my possibly controversial and probably way over-complicated attempt at explaining it:
は is used when a sentence (NOTE: the full sentence. Were not talking about phrases within a sentence) is not bound to a point in space and time. It’s just a **general statement**.
月がきれいだ – The moon is beautiful [right HERE, right NOW]. <- bound to the present
月はきれいだ – The moon is [a] beautiful [thing]. <- general, not bound to a point in time, so は is used.
By the way, は here is arguably an obligatory contraction of がは. So-called “binding particles”, (は、も、しか、etc.) drop が or を when attached to the same word as them.
When the sentence IS bound to a point in time, が introduces something new to the “scene” as the subject (“a” person/thing), while は marks something already established to be in the “scene” as the subject (“the” person/thing). Furthermore, “I” and “you” similarly take は. As a rhetorical device, when you want to portray an event as really shocking, you can use が to portray the subject as someone new to the scene, even if they actually aren’t. When stating a real-time observation, you mark the subject as something “new” (が). Question words (who, what, etc.) never use は.
が can mark the object of the sentence in certain cases （好きだ, 分かる, ある (in the sense of “have”), potential form of verbs, etc.). I’m not going to elaborate on this because I think it’s getting outside the scope of this discussion.
が is used to mark the subject as the “focus”. In other words, the thing being identified. Essentially XはY = YがX as shown:
学生は田中さんです <- The student is Tanaka-san.
田中さんが学生です <- *Tanaka-san* is the student. (same meaning)
田中さんは学生です <- Tanaka-san is a student.
学生が田中さんです <- *A student* is Tanaka-san??? INVALID (I think?)
ケーキを食べたのは私です <- The one who ate the cake is me.
私がケーキを食べました <- I am the one who ate the cake.
In a phrase within a sentence, you generally don’t use は (exception for contrast, explanation coming up next.)
は can be used to indicate contrast, sometimes even within a clause within the sentence. Basically, if the statement/clause ends in “but…” (が、けど) or an implied “but…”, you should mark something with は, usually the subject unless it’s clear that it’s something else that’s being contrasted. Remember がは and をは obligatorily become contracted to just は.
は is also used to emphasize negation of something, which is probably just an extension of this idea of contrast.
は can replace the の particle sometimes:
象は鼻が長い – Elephants have long trunks
象の鼻は長い – The trunks of elephants are long (same meaning)
This happens in idiomatic phrases frequently:
田中さんは頭がいいです – Tanaka-san has a good head = Tanaka-san’s head is good = Tanaka-san is smart
は sometimes marks a topic that’s not actually an argument the sentence’s predicate.
僕はお茶です。 – “Tea, for me.” (only makes sense following others saying what *THEY* want to drink. Basically, another type of contrast.)
Sometimes the object is a non-contrastive topic:
ケーキはボブが食べた。 As for the cake, Bob ate it.
There’s still more things that could be said, and more that I admittedly don’t fully understand, but it’s nearly 4 AM and I have important work tomorrow. Why am I still writing this? I should go to bed…
There are subtleties in the usage of は and が that Cure Dolly’s model doesn’t fully cover. This is mainly because it isn’t meant to cover them. The basic concepts behind topic and subject are (IMO) very well explained, but further subtleties and colloquialisms are something that she states are best learned via immersion. The grammar model is just there to get you started really. Once you can read reasonably well you will have internalized your own (subconscious) grammar model and can mostly forget about grammar.
It’s like learning to drive a car – the instruction manual can be invaluable to let you know where all the controls are and what they should do, but only practice will result in a smooth ride.
The best explanation of wa Vs ga for me was the book “Making Sense of Japanese” by Jay Rubin. After reading it the difference felt so clear and obvious.