The GA particle: it's a little subjective This particle can help you indicate the subject in a Japanese sentence.
This insight was originally published on December 07, 2021, and transferred here later.
There comes a point in every Japanese language learners life when they confront the が particle. For some, this particle can be one of the easier ones to understand grammatically; but oftentimes, が gets clouded by a mist of confusion when it is first introduced in a Japanese lesson. Let's talk about が, how it fits into basic Japanese grammar, and how the difficulties we associate with learning が can be very subjective...
が is the subject particle!
が is what people (or at least me) like to call "the subject particle". You place it after a word when you want to designate it as the subject of your sentence. What does that mean though? What makes a subject a subject? Isn't it just the same thing as the topic?
The subject of a sentence is a thing, some kind of noun, that does some kind of action. A subject verbs, or it can verb at things. That is pretty much it!
Here's a couple of Japanese sentences using が to mark a subject:
A subject just verbing:A subject verbing at something that is not the subject:
- 犬が食べています。
- inu ga tabeteimasu.
- The dog is eating.
- 犬がうんこを食べています。
- inu ga unko o tabeteimasu.
- The dog is eating poop.
In both of these cases, the dog is the subject, and he does a thing. His thing is eating in this case, but that doesn't really matter. All that matters about the dog is that he is the subject!
A turbulent relationship with は
For a lot of people who are first learning Japanese, the difference between the が particle and theは particle can be extremely confusing. I will break the difference down for you as simply as I can. The main difference between は and が can be quickly summarized as follows:
- は is concerned with topics
- が is concerned with subjects
This might not mean anything to you yet though, especially if you don't know what the difference between a subject and a topic is. Subjects are a part of speech that indicates a specific thing in a sentence that does an action in the sentence, much like we explained earlier. A topic, by comparison, is the context that the speaker wants kept in mind as they're making the sentence. The topic of a sentence isn't a part of speech that has a particular meaning in the sentence like the subject does; it can be anything, including the subject!
It is also valuable to note that a sentence needs a subject, but a topic isn't necessary to make a sentence. Furthermore, the sentence you make within your topic's context can have a separate subject all on its own.
Let's look at a topic and subject in the wild:
- 音楽はジャズが楽しい。
- ongaku wa jazu ga tanoshii.
- Concerning music, jazz is fun.
In this case, music is our topic, marked with the は particle. Jazz, on the other hand, is our subject. It is marked by the が particle, and has an action it does (the state of being fun). Our topic here, on the other hand, is only concerned with setting up the context for the rest of the sentence. The subject and its action explain more details about that topic.
がtta go, see ya~
The が particle has many more tricks up its proverbial sleeve, but let's save those for another time. The idea of が marking the subject of a sentence is a very integral part of speaking Japanese, and so it deserved its own moment to be highlighted.
If you have any questions or insights about the subject of the が particle, I'd love to hear what you have to say in the comments section below! 💪😎