The WA particle - a topic to comment on Indicating topics in a Japanese sentence.
This insight was originally published on October 04, 2021, and transferred here later.
When you're starting off learning Japanese, one of the first grammar treats you learn about is は .
If you haven't learned about it, は is what we call a "particle"; and particles are little word-like sounds that mean nothing on their own, but when combined with other words, add meaning to the context of the sentence! It is sort of like the virus of the Japanese language-- inert until it has access to living partner to inject its genetic material into and propagate. ~Super cool!
The topic particle!
- 「は」は何をしますか？
- "wa" wa nani o shimasu ka?
- What does "wa" do?
は is often considered "the topic particle". This is because it marks the word it follows as the contextual focal point (i.e. the topic) for what is about to be said.
See the example above? While English doesn't have particles like this, in the Japanese text & Romanized transliteration below it, you can see a little bit of how it works. 「は」は... is our focus here, with the topic particle は sadistically & confusingly following the quoted topic particle 「は」 in order to mark it as the topic of the sentence. Everything after that point in the sentence is a comment regarding that topic.
The topic-comment sentence structure
は is one of the starring roles for a manner of speaking that many languages use called "topic-comment". You start of a sentence by laying out a topic, and then you comment on it with your next statement(s).
For example, in English, we might do it this way:
"Concerning movies from my childhood, I actually liked Matilda!"
- "Movies from my childhood" being the topic,
- The rest of the sentence was the comment on that topic.
In our Japanese example earlier, "は" was the topic, and our comment was asking what it does.
That's it for this topic~
The は particle has a few other interesting tricks up it's proverbial sleeve, but marking the topic of a sentence is by-far the most commonly used, and arguably the most important one you will learn when speaking Japanese. Most of the sentences you say will use the topic-comment format in some way. This is especially true for early on in your language learning adventure! So stay on topic and give the は particle some love~
Also, if you have any comments on this topic, feel free to discuss them below! 😊