は vs が
Just a note before we begin: remember that は is pronounced wa when acting as a particle. In every other word, it is pronounced ha. Regarding the phrase こんにちは—the は here is the particle は. It literally means, “as for today…” Today is usually pronounced きょう, but it can also be pronounced こんにち.
In the previous lesson, I explained that the way to form x = y sentences is by using 「ｘがｙです」. So why does Genki use は instead of が? The answer lies in what exactly は is: it is the topic particle. は’s job is to mark the topic of discussion. We don’t have a grammatical way to do this in English, but we can say something like “As for x…” for 「ｘは…」 to simulate a more exact translation. Unlike が and most other particles, it doesn’t work well to treat は as a train carriage. In contrast, we can call it a flag as it lets us know what we’re talking about, rather that the role of something in the sentence.
So, then, if we say ｘはｙです, then what is the subject? We can infer that x must be, but が marks the subject, not は！ Like Genki explains, It is very common in Japanese to drop things that are understood. What is happening when you say ｘはｙです is that you are dropping the ｘが because it is understood in context. I will represent a dropped が using ∅, so in the sentence 「わたしは ∅が がくせいです。」the subject and the topic are わたし, we just don’t have to repeat ourselves. A very literal translation in English would be “As for me, I am a student.”
______________ ___________________ __
| / _______________ ================= \ /
| わたしは / [ ] = = ||
| は \ [ ∅が ] = がくせいです ==============___
|____________\ [ が ] = ====== です ]_/
| ===============----==============================]
| ____(_)_(_)_(_)________\__/____________(_)_(_)_(_)_\\___
| ========================================================
The reason why this is such an important thing to clarify is that the topic is not always the subject! It is also often the object, and occasionally other things. For example, it might be a time, or the place something happens. Here is an example:
Vocab:
- 今日・きょう：today
- 天気・てんき：weather
- 曇り・くもり：cloudy
今日は天気が曇りです。As for today, the weather is cloudy.
The topic is 今日, so that means our conversation will be about today. A pretty cool feature about topics is that once you’ve defined the topic of conversation, you can leave it out until you’re ready to change it again. Speakers use context to understand what you mean!
The grammatical subject of the sentence is 天気, so it is the doer of the action. i.e. the weather is the thing that is cloudy.
Finally, 曇り is attached to です, which says that the subject = cloudy.
And that’s all there is to it! This is how は and が works, really. It is a common question that is brought up by students beginning to learn the language since it seems like the two particles can be used interchangeably, which is not necessarily the case. Now, there are times when, in context, using either one has the same grammatical meaning. In these cases, choosing which particle to use (or not to use) can be dependent on connotations associated with each. This starts getting pretty deep, but if you are interested in learning more, Tofugu has made an excellent article that explains the differences very well.
______________ ___________________ __
| / _______________ ================= \ /
| 今日は / [ ] = = ||
| は \ [ 天気が ] = 曇りです ==============___
|____________\ [ が ] = ====== です ]_/
| ===============----==============================]
| ____(_)_(_)_(_)________\__/____________(_)_(_)_(_)_\\___
| ========================================================
Up Next
Next, we’ll be talking about asking questions in Japanese. It’s very simple, and all you need is one little particle: か.