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I know I was confused at first but I came up with a little easy memory device for them.
So you know は emphasizes what is after it. Imagine the two lines on the right have arrows pointing in that direction. That would mean the emphasized subject is on the right side of the sentence, AFTER は.
Now look at が, it has two lines (the beginning and end of stroke 1) that both point to the left. That means the emphasized subject is to the left of が, BEFORE it.
Hope this helps you! (only works in horizontal writing, but by the time we read vertical you should already know it then)
That’s quite helpful for remembering them.
Thank you for sharing this. :)
Great start Robert. As you get to more advanced usage of these particles, though, one sees that there is more to it then being able to tell which is the “topic” particle and which is the “identifier” particle. But this is a good way for any beginner to look at it… to get the “feet wet” as they say.
~ fv
Hmmm… It’s been so long since I did the wa/ga thing with TextFugu; looking back on it, it’s actually not that good an explanation now that I think about it. The best way to learn the difference between the two is to just go out there and see it for yourself. Obviously that’s a little much for a beginner, but just referring to は as the topic marker/particle and が as the subject marker/particle is probably sufficient in the mean time – it gives you the basic idea of the differences, but you wont get a grasp for the ideas behind it until you see it in lots of different situations. As long as you *get* that “topic” refers to “the topic of conversation” while “subject” refers to “the subject of a clause”, you should be ok.
Also, when it comes to *reading* は and が, read は as “as for X,…” and が as “X is” – I think that helps more than anything. It kind of fits in with the Japanese style of speaking: often where the sentence begins with は, they’ll kind of hold the あ sound and trail off (as if they’re saying “Uhhhhh….”), before coming back in the with the main part of the sentence (e.g. 「これ はぁぁ・・・ なんですか。」. As for が (or should I say「「が」はぁぁ・・・」), it’s just kinda said as part of the sentence (e.g. 「すし が 好きです。」).
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