subject marker – Agony or Fun?! Second Language Learning

Today’s sentence construction for describing existence uses particle “wa” for subject marker. What was the subject marker for yesterday’s sentence construction?

1. [Noun1] no [Noun2] ni [Subject] ga Arimasu/Imasu.

example; Kombini no Tonari ni Ginkou ga Arimasu. (Next to the convenience store, there is a Bank.)

As you can see, “ga” was the subject marker. Both “wa” and “ga” can be subject marker. And most of the time you need to choose “wa” or “ga” for subject marker properly. This issue is very important, but it is difficult to explain how to choose “wa” or “ga” simply. So for today, let me tell you the difference between “wa” and “ga” as subject marker as below;

– When the predicate is the important information, use “wa”.

– When the subject is the important information, use “ga”.

Probably this explanation for “wa” is not enough to say “the speaker and the listener share what the subject is” in today’s title. In a sentence in which “wa” is used as subject marker, the predicate is more important than the subject because the subject is already known and the predicate is new information about the subject. This issue will be discussed soon again.

Practice and remember the following conversation. Suppose neither A or B is Sato-san.

A : Satou-san no Uchi wa Doko ni Arimasuka. (Where is Sato-san’s home?)

B : Satou-san no Uchi wa Kyoto ni Arimasu. (Sato-san’s home is in Kyoto.)

This post was written with reference to the exercise A4 on Section 10 of “Minna no Nihongo” published by “3A Corporation”

This series have explained “Wa-ga construction” for several days, because the Japanese textbook “Minna no Nihongo” is dealing with “Wa-ga construction” in Chapter 9. And it is not only an introduction of “Wa-ga construction”, also an introduction of particle “ga”. If you were introduced particle “ga” through “Wa-ga construction”, you might think that the particles “wa” and “ga” could coexist in a sentence. Yes, they can be in a sentence together if the sentence is Wa-ga construction, but most of the time you have to choose one of the two (wa or ga) for subject in a sentence.

1. Watashi wa Nihonjin desu. (I am Japanese.)

2. Watashi ga Nihonjin desu. (I am the person who is Japanese.)

In the both sentence 1 and 2, the subject is “Watashi”. But the subject marker in 1 is “wa”, while the subject marker in 2 is “ga”. How do you properly choose “wa” or “ga” for a subject? The exact explanation would be lengthy. For the simplicity, let me say as below.

– When the predicate is the important information, use “wa” for subject marker.

– When the subject itself is the important information, use “ga” for subject marker.

Anyway, sticking to “Wa-ga construction” would cause a huge damage on your sense about Japanese. The followings are quiz about Wa-ga construction sentences that use verbs for predicate and Verb predicate sentences. Choose “ga” or “o”. And answer the type of verb.

1. Watashi wa Okane { ga or o } arimasu. (I have money.)