iSoron Wrote:The second point is, when testing knowledge, hide the answers. The brain is great at conjuring up fitting explanations, then convincing itself that it knew the answers all along. [this is also a criticism to Antimoon's "pause and think" method]

Next time, don't ask "why is が acceptable here?"; ask instead "which particle is acceptable here and why?". You'll see a completely different [and more lucid] set of answers.

This is very insightful.

I learned one further interesting bit: in everyday speech, the は/が are often omitted (I thought that was true only for は).

So now I wonder if there's a correlation between those places where the は or が tends to be omitted, and those where the choice of either one is OK. Or conversely, do those は's and が's over which there is significant consensus among native speakers coincide with those in which the particle, be it は or が, is never dropped?

gfb345 Wrote:I learned one further interesting bit: in everyday speech, the は/が are often omitted, and now I wonder if there's a correlation between those places where the は or が tends to be omitted, and those where the choice of one or the other is OK. In other words, I would imagine that those は's and が's over which there is significant consensus among native speakers match pretty closely with those in which the particle, be it は or が, should never dropped...

You could equally plausibly argue that it would be the other way round -- that you can drop the particle if it would be obvious which one you meant, but if both are OK and thus possibly conveying different nuance then you want to leave it in.

Actually I suspect neither of these theories are true, and it's probably More Complicated :-)