Hey all. Before starting I'd like to say I did search for an already-made topic on this but the few I saw were a little too advanced for me. I also just plain suck at forum searching. I recently finished RtK and have begun working through Tae Kim's guide. I'm up to the Verb Basics lesson, and have been taking it slowly. So far, things have been going ok... I was never sure what everyone on this forum means when they say "do Tae Kim". I just read through the lesson, try to understand the basic points and some new vocab/kanji. I then work through the example exercises in a notebook to hopefully give a rough evaluation of whether I understood the material or not. It's mostly for writing practice though.

As for the particle trouble, I think I understand the は particle more or less, but I'm having a heck of a time trying to figure out the differences between は and が. How do you know how to use which one? It mentions that は is used for marking the topic of the sentence, or introducing a new topic into a conversation. が is described as the identifier particle because it indicates that the speaker wants to identify something unspecified.　I understand it for some cases, but not others.

For example, One of the example sentences given was:
ボブ：　誰が学生？- Who is the one that is student?
アリス：　ジムが学生。- Jim is the one who is student.

I think I understand the first part. The only reason I know to use が here is because は wouldn't make sense (according to Tae Kim). The second sentence though. Why can't you use は and just say that Jim is a student? I just feel hopefully lost with this stuff right now... Am I supposed to have a great understanding of everything before moving on or just get a basic idea of how some stuff works and it will become second nature after being exposed to it enough?

One final question. Aside from a few basic phrases and vocab, I'm a complete beginner. I'm using Nukemarine's Anki deck for Tae Kim. Currently, when reviewing I: 1) Attempt to read the card correctly, 2) recognize the kanji readings if possible, 3) Try to remember the vocab, and 4) Comprehend and understand the whole sentence. Was never sure if I was doing it right or what. Just seems like so much information at once to soak in, and I'm still a newb when it comes to using Anki.

Thanks for any suggestions/input anyone has, and I apologize again if this topic is located elsewhere.

は vs が is infamously hard to pin down when you're trying to learn Japanese. Probably the best you can hope for is to try to accumulate a collection of rules of thumb and let it crystallise as you read more sentences. I'd be a little wary of blasting past the basic grammar thinking "I'll understand this later", but I make an exception here :-)

Quote:ボブ：　誰が学生？- Who is the one that is student?
アリス：　ジムが学生。- Jim is the one who is student.

One way to look at this is at the 'rule of thumb' level: (a) question-words never take は and (b) the answer to a question is kind of like handing the questioner his sentence back with the gaps filled in: it uses the same particle the question had. は is OK but not as an answer to the question asked.

The other way is to take a higher level overview and say that は is kind of marking stuff-we-already-know, background-thing-about-which-I'm-going-to-talk, topic. Then from that you can say "it makes sense that you don't use は here because "it's Jim" is the interesting new data we're providing to our questioner, it's definitely not the background already-known thing" and kind of justify your rules of thumb to yourself.

If you can find a grammar book or textbook with some discussion of this it has probably had more thought put into the explanation than you'll get from the average forum post response (including mine!). So you're probably better trying that kind of reference for an initial idea, and then asking questions about specific problems (like "why is this sentence in particular は when I thought xyz..."). If you ask for a general explanation you're likely to end up just getting us all arguing with each other about the detail :-)

I recently saw these ones on smart.fm and wondered about this. (Not that I even know enough to be sure they're actually examples of this question =P)

顎が痛い。 - My jaw hurts.
靴が汚れた。 - My shoes got dirty.
背中がかゆい。 - My back itches.

In the examples above, the subject (me) is omitted. Usually with body parts or other inherent qualities, instead of 私の背中 (my back, which would sound kind of weird, like your back was something you went out and bought) you would say 私は背中が (as for me, (my) back ...), or if we already know "me" is the subject, just 背中が.

靴が汚れた on the other hand, could technically go either way (私の靴は or (私は)靴が) - not sure which is more common or natural.

Offshore Wrote:For example, One of the example sentences given was:
ボブ：　誰が学生？- Who is the one that is student?
アリス：　ジムが学生。- Jim is the one who is student.

I think I understand the first part. The only reason I know to use が here is because は wouldn't make sense (according to Tae Kim). The second sentence though. Why can't you use は and just say that Jim is a student? I just feel hopefully lost with this stuff right now... Am I supposed to have a great understanding of everything before moving on or just get a basic idea of how some stuff works and it will become second nature after being exposed to it enough?

は and が are kind of shaky for me--as it is for most non-native learners--but this is what I assume is this case:

You would use は if you were already talking about Jim--in other words, if he had already been established as the topic of the conversation. For example, 「ジムは学生ですか。」 (Jim, is he a student?)

But the information about Jim and who is or is not a student, in this case, is new, and just being brought to light. Therefore, we would not use は in the example you provided to refer to him, because he has not been established as the topic of the conversation.

Sometimes it can help to try imagining the scenario. Let's say that Bob is Alice's friend, and they're looking at pictures of Alice's family (for whatever reason). One of the people in the pictures is a foreign exchange student (留学生・りゅうがくせい) who lived with Alice.

ボブ: 誰が留学生？ (Looking at picture)
アリス: ジムが留学生。(Points to Jim)

In this example, Bob has never heard of Jim before; Alice is bringing up new information, by pointing to the exchange student, and essentially saying, "This is the student, Jim." It wouldn't make sense to use は unless Bob already knew Jim was the exchange student -- in which case, this exchange would never happen.

The situation in which it would be okay to use は would be this:

ボブ - 誰が学生？ (Who is the student?)
アリス - ジムが学生。(Jim is the student)
アリス (Continued) - （ジムは）高校に通っている。([Jim] is attending high school)

I put ジムは in parenthesis because in this case I don't think it's necessary to use, since we obviously can tell we're still talking about Jim. As you can see, since we already have established that we are talking about Jim, now it's okay to use は when referring to him.

Quote:One final question. Aside from a few basic phrases and vocab, I'm a complete beginner. I'm using Nukemarine's Anki deck for Tae Kim. Currently, when reviewing I: 1) Attempt to read the card correctly, 2) recognize the kanji readings if possible, 3) Try to remember the vocab, and 4) Comprehend and understand the whole sentence. Was never sure if I was doing it right or what. Just seems like so much information at once to soak in, and I'm still a newb when it comes to using Anki.

I don't know whether it's wrong or right, but that's exactly what I do. If I have a problem remembering a sentence, I'll write it down multiple times.

Don't think that you use は with things you're already talking about, が with things you're introducing, etc. etc. That's a popular but wrong explanation. Furthermore, は doesn't mark "subject"--it can just as easily go with the object, so don't say that either.

If you've heard those explanations, please try to forget them.

A large part of this problem stems from people not grasping the topic/comment relationship in the pure form in which it exists in Japanese. English grammar muddies the issue by combining topic and subject into one position--this works in most of the cases when topic and subject are the same, but when they're not, you have to shuffle the rest of the sentence around to end up with the topic in subject position.

(One particularly mind-bending type of shuffling is called "subject raising." Linguists like to argue about whether it happens at all in Japanese. On the other hand, if you try to invent a logically precise language with positional grammar and no topic provision, it can really ruin your day. Hmm, I think I'll take the Japanese grammar.)

So, topic/comment. When you make a statement about something you're often connecting two things: a concept shared between you and the listener (topic) and a statement that further describes that concept (comment).

In questions, the comment part can have blanks (marked with words like 誰、どれ、どこ、いつ) or ask the listener to agree or disagree with the comment (intonation, か、かい); however, the topic cannot have blanks.

If the topic is already obvious to both the speaker and the listener, it is completely dropped: no need to state the obvious.

If you don't think you listener will know the topic, you have to spell it out. You can give examples with 「や」--this seems to be the only one that doesn't confuse English speakers, so I'll ignore it

You can specify the topic with 「は」. This automatically gives something of a contrastive feel, because it says "of all the possible topics, I pick this one."

You can add a topic with 「も」. This particle is a tricky pain in the ass. Seriously. You think は／が is bad? Well, this one means "there may be many possible topics for the following comment and I'm not going to say what they are, but this marked topic definitely goes with this comment. So there." It's usually introduced as meaning "also," but that's not it's core meaning: it can appear alone.

So, that's the topic part. Now, the comment. が and を, the identifier particles, are most often part of a comment. Comments are usually structured around something acting as a verb: either a real verb or an adjective/noun describing something--in any case it always ends up at the end. But, it's often not enough to just say "did." You have to identify who did, or what is pitch black, or what you ate yesterday. That's where が and を come in. が identifies subjects. を identifies を-things, usually what you'd call "direct objects" in English. Exactly what those terms mean depend on the verb and verb form; think of them as two slots that the verb assigns meaning to.

For example, 食べる means "organism (が) eats food (を)."

「食べた」<= comment that something ate or something was eaten.
「ケーキを食べた」<= like above, except ケーキ is identified as being eaten.
「ケーキが食べた」<= like above, except ケーキ is identified as having ate something.

Where this gets tricky is that "identification" is really just a way to further elaborate a verb, not a way to elaborate a noun.

For example,
「車だ」"is car"
「赤い車だ」"is red car"
In the second comment, we know more about the car because the adjective 赤い describes it. We're not saying something about redness, we're not saying something about car, (by the definition of "topic") we're saying something about the topic, whatever that is.

When you add a が or を to a verb, we know more about how the verb happened.

Consider
A -「猫はどこ？」
B -「食べている。」

The first sentence identifies a topic: "cat", picking it out of the cloud of possible topics, then has a fill-in-the-blank question about place "where?"
The second question has an obvious topic (thus unstated) and offers the comment "is eating."

If we replace the second sentence with:
B - 「ケーキが食べている。」
we elaborate what's happening. "Where's the cat?" / "The cake is eating it." Poor kitty.

B - 「ケーキを食べている。」 is perhaps a more politically correct replacement. Now, the cat is eating the cake.

B -「お前が食べている」is left at as an exercise for the reader, but note that

A -「猫はどこ？」
B -「お前は食べている。」 is a non-sequitur: it leaves the question unanswered and raises a new topic.

Hopefully, this is enough to get you started, since it's time for me to go to bed. Here's what you have to do to extend your knowledge:

Continue reading. Take some sentences, pick them apart, find the topic and comment. Notice how answers to questions don't usually change the topic--if they do, try to understand why.

For later: changing topic when contrasting two things: "contrastive は". も vs English "also" and "even."

wildweathel Wrote:Please stop saying that you use は with things you're already talking about, が with things you're introducing, etc. etc. That's a popular but wrong explanation.

If you've heard those explanations, please try to forget them.

I am not trying to argue with you -- I just want to make sure that the information I read is accurate -- but even though it was written by a native speaker, the explanations used here, or in "All About Particles", for example, are not accurate?

I don't see anything wrong with your examples. I'm trying to preempt the less-than-right-or-helpful descriptions that everyone's googled. No offense taken, I hope?

AAP is correct and a kick-ass resource. Only problem I have with it is that it usually stays on the surface and doesn't dig down to the core things. It'll give you a dozen uses of が, all of them correct and well explained, and not give you the common thread between them (elaborating a verb by identifying its subject).

(hmm, that description of が with nouns/adjectives/state-verbs falls flat. I'll need to think it over.)

I should also remind everyone that I'm just some loudmouth brat on the Internet, please argue with me, especially if it gets you thinking and looking to understand things better yourself.

As for about.com, it's full of fuzzy cop-outs like "indicates emphasis" and "depends on the context or the intonation"--especially unhelpful when they tell you は means emphasis and then that が means emphasis, too! The only solid thing it says that I disagree with is that が indicates new information. が correlates with new information because new information has to go in the comment, and thus can't be marked with は. You can have が as part of a topic, where it necessarily goes with "old information":

ビルが高い都市には　(topic)
小さなアリのような人が住む。(comment)

In the city where buildings are high (topic)
live people like small ants. (comment)

There are tons of small rules to pick up. For example, questionwords. Before a questionword, you use ha. After a question word, you use ga. Example:

彼はだれですか？
だれがそれをやりましたか？

Oh noes, another ha/ga thread.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Oh noes, another ha/ga thread.

ha/ga！

guffaw!

I was actually thinking that ha/ga deserved a meme picture when I made that post.

Technically は and が are different kinds of particle, and their most accurate grammatical description available in linguistics at present are astoundingly long. It requires 1,000 times more complicated and sophisticated knowledge of the modern Japanese grammar than what you can get from Tae Kim. So asking for a quick and dirty tip for the usages of は/が is like asking for a three-line summary of a 1,000 page long academic article.

I understand why beginners are having trouble using the two particles. But native speakers don't think they're difficult or particularly confusing because they're clearly different in meaning, nuance, and nuance, though kids and less educated native speakers do get tripped up by them. I think it's just it's difficult to give a short explanation for them because they're too frequent and have too many grammatical rules. It's like the English word "the" is so frequent and fundamental you can't give a short and simple explanation that covers all the usages. But native English speakers don't think it's a difficult word. Advanced English learners aren't having trouble using it either. If anything, it appears so frequently in speech and text it's one of the easiest words for learners to grasp the core meaning.

I think some of the members of this forum have been learning Japanese for more than several years. Do they still find は/が difficult? I mean, I kind of doubt you find them very confusing if you have listened to native material for, say, 10,000+ hours and read an equivalent amount of text written by native speakers for native speakers. You might still make errors a little more frequently than native speakers after years of learning, but it's not unusual. After all, native speakers have been reading/listening to Japanese more than advanced learners by an order of magnitude. It might be just me, but I guess you find it confusing simply because you haven't been exposed to them enough.

How many hours have you listened to native material, Offshore? How much Japanese have you read? If you try to speak/write by using explicit grammar rules found in your average textbook, you'd find it very difficult to use は/が because those rules are terribly incomplete. I think it's rare an explanation perfectly describes a usage you run into in the wild because simple grammatical descriptions can only give simplified explanations.

But I don't think it's very difficult to make sense of a sentence having the particles. It's not that difficult to mimic the way native speakers use は/が either because they appear very frequently. You can't be short of example native sentences to use as templates as long as you do sentence mining using context-rich native material.

I think it's problematic only when you try to apply rules you don't know, which always fails for obvious reasons, or when you try to understand a sentence that has little or no context other than the sentence itself.