Hello, and welcome to th-

Wait a second. You’re not new here >.>

You actually joined the forums before me, but welcome anyway and nice to meet you! If the inventor of English wanted you to use fewer parenthetical statements, he/she wouldn’t have included not one, but TWO ways of parethenticizing (a word which I may or may not have just made up).

Hi Daniel!

I wish you the best of luck on improving your situation, as well as Japan’s. If you ever need support or guidance, the forum community is here for you!

~Eihiko

Hrm. Welp. All I can say is that a mummified corpse is better than a rotting one.

Mind if I take a stab at explaining it? It’s so tricky to give a good explanation that the challenge of trying is sort of fun ^_^

TL;DR: There are 5 or 6 different ways that the two particles interact in Japanese, so you’re never going to get a simple answer. That’s probably why osmosis works the best- it’s easier to get a feel for the sentence structures that are commonly used. Looking at the connections between the two particles actually requires some linguistic analysis that probably even native speakers aren’t aware of. That being said, I’m going to embarrass myself by trying anyway, so if you’re interested, read on:

Defining は and が from Japanese is difficult because there is no one answer- the particles have picked up various uses over the language’s history.

The most general sense is that は describes the topic of conversation, while が describes the subject. Have you ever gone on a date with an arrogant jerk who only ever talks about themself? They can cover a variety of subjects- the sports they’re good at, the size of their muscles, the smoothness of their skin, their favorite music and why it’s the best, etc- but they’re technically talking about themself the entire time. In this sense, the arrogant jerk is the topic of the conversation, even though their are many subjects involved.

The impression that things followed by は can be omitted probably comes from the fact that a topic persists across many sentences, so it is generally known and can be implied. So if you’re having an avid conversation about the properties of oranges, you can start with “オレンジ　は　フルーツ です” to say that oranges are fruit, and then omit the topic and say “丸です” to say that oranges are also circles (sorry, my Japanese vocab is terrible). But generally, you are assumed to be the topic of your conversation, so if you start off saying “丸です,” someone might think that you’re calling yourself a circle.

When you want to bring up a new subject, you use が. Because new subjects can become the topic of conversation, が　is often seen when you’re trying to change the topic. In Koichi’s example, this is partly what’s happening. Each time one of the two people says “I’m the real one!” they’re pulling the spotlight from the other guy and saying “we’re talking about me now; I’m the real one.”

There are many other rules that loosely play into these ideas. For example, in a complex sentence, は is used for the subject of the independent clause, while が　is used for the subject of the dependent clauses. This goes along with the idea that は　describes the subject which all other subjects need in order to make sense (that’s why they’re called dependent).

が is also used to add detail to a topic or to amend it. So if you’re talking to your mom about your friend John, and your mom says “which friend is that?” you would use が　to say “John is the friend with the crazy afro who always wears Grateful Dead T-shirts.”

When the subject of your sentence is a question word, like “what” or “who,” you use が。There are actually a lot of ways to look at this one. Because you’re demanding an answer, you’re directing the focus of your conversation to this mystery object or person, so in a way, it’s a new topic. But also, “what” and “who” can’t really be topics because they do not persist over multiple sentences, so maybe they use が because they can only ever be subjects of a single sentence?

はじめまして、ザンダー！

I have always wanted to visit Washington! There are a lot of job opportunities for a Computer Whisperer on the west coast, so I’m considering moving there, but I have no idea what it’s like. Do you live in the part of Washington that gets no snow? Or the part that gets a lot?

Also, I think your idea of playing FFXIV on the Japanese server is awesome! I wish I had thought of that >_>

Oh, I’m Eihiko by the way! よろしくおねがいします　＾＿＾

Hi Sarah ManyTamago! はじめまして！よろしくおねがいします！

I think that studying Japanese once every two days shows commendable consistency. I tend to binge study, then go through periods of laziness where I forget everything.

Anyway, an official welcome to the forum! I agree that eggs are scary, but you’re safe now, they won’t find you here ^o^

-Eihiko

はじめまして！

I think that each subsequent language you learn is easier to pick up than the last, because you gain a better understanding of language as a whole and your own techniques for learning it. That being said, learning two languages at once takes double the effort! I’m guessing you’re learning Spanish for school, so it probably won’t be as bad as if you were learning both independently.

Good luck, and I hope to see you around the forums!

-Eihiko

Ah boo, I was really excited for a learn-a-language video game too. This just looks like a 3D vocabulary list.