I've been studying Japanese for about a month now. Thus far, I've been able to grab the gist of the language, and I've been able to answer most of the questions out of the textbook correctly. However, I'm not sure if I'm translating this sentence correctly: "つくえのうえにペンとしゃしんとじしょがあります。" For some reason my textbook skipped the answer to this question.

What I got is: "There is a pen, photograph, and a dictionary on the desk."

Oh yeah, one more question. Why is there a "が” before あります？

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Hey, I'm not sure if you meant to make a topic with no subject, but that's interesting...wasn't sure you could even do it!

Welcome to the wonderful world of Japanese study. You'll be frustrated before long
But, everytime it happens, we've got this lovely thread here when all these stupid questions come up:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=3249

Your translation is correct.
Why is there a "が"?
Because that's the particle used with ある／あります. It's often dropped in casual speech, but in writing it's almost always there.

There's probably some cool grammar thing that goes along with it...
But the take-home point is that ある is used to mean "there is," and が is the particle that comes after "what" is.
くるま　が　あります --> "Car" "<--" "there is"
"There is a car"

Your ninja skills at making invisible posts will suit you well for learning Japanese.

LOL. I had no idea that I made an invisible post lol (first time posting something). I'll make sure not to that again. lol

And thank you Asriel for your explanation. It cleared up my confusion. Thanks again. And thank you for pointing that thread, I'll make sure to post all my questions in there from now on.

[ファブリス]

@Color: you can edit your post that started a thread, and then change the topic title.

To add a bit, I would say there are two reasons why が is used with あります.

One reason is that が marks the subject of a sentence (whereas を marks the object). ある means 'to exist (inanimate object)', so you're saying that a pen, a picture, and a dictionary exist on the desk. Since those things are the subjects of the sentence, you mark them with が.

Another thing is that を only works with verbs that you can choose to do. Any verb you can't choose to do you mark with が. You can't just choose whether to understand a language, so you would say フランス語がわかりません--I don't understand French. Whereas, you can choose to play tennis, so you would say テニスをします. Obviously, pens, pictures and dictionaries can't choose whether or not they exist, so they must be marked by が.

But yeah, you can also just remember that が is used with ある and いる.

It isn't true to say that only が can be used with いる and ある.

http://www.google.co.jp/search?q=%22%E5%...rt=10&sa=N

が is usually used, because it's the subject marker. は is the topic marker. The topic and subject of a sentence are not necessarily the same thing (but often are). You can certainly use は before ある or いる in situations where you're contrasting things. As in something like, 「これはあるけど、それはない」.

I think he probably meant that が instead of を is used with iru and aru.

To the OP: What book or course are you using that gave you that sentence without explaining が?