こんにちは、ワニカニ！
I have a question regarding は/が particles
If I understand it correctly は is a particle that indicates the topic similiar to ”is”. At the same time が is also just that, the difference is what is emphasised.
Example:
私は18才です = 18 is my age (18 being the new info gathered from the sentence)
私が82才です = I am the one who is 82 (Me being the focus instead of the age)
If I am wrong let me know!
Yeah that’s a fine understanding of the two for the time being. I would ask questions like this in the short grammar questions thread rather than making a new one though
I didn’t know a thread like that existed. Appreciated! I’ll be sure to use it and thank you!
Okay, so I have my guess for this one. I studied this not so long ago (N5 content, from minna no nihongo), particle が can ben used to make noun clauses. With は it would be like you said, indicating that 私 is the topic, but with が it would be adding your age as an adjective for 私.
Maybe it doesn’t make so much sense for such a short sentence. But in the textbook where I studied this, I just saw what you are posting here, being が used like it was は, but the grammatical difference is this one that I explained before. An example phrase from the textbook would be:
ミラ－さんが作ったケーキ
The cake made by mira-san
This is what I might guess from what you posted but I might be wrong. Better to check on grammar explanations.
It seems to be the opposite from what I’ve understood from は and が: What's the Difference, Really?
This seems to be right! It puts emphasis on that it’s mira san from what I’ve understood ^ - ^
Grammatically, は marks the topic, while が marks the subject. The topic is what the sentence is about, while the subject is the doer of the verb.
In the clause ミラーさんが作ったケーキ, Mira-san is the doer of the verb - she made the cake. However, the cake itself is probably the topic - ミラーさんが作ったケーキはおいしかった, “the cake that Mira-san made was delicious”.
You cannot use は within subordinate clauses like that - having the topic of the sentenced buried within a subordinate clause would be… ungrammatical. ミラーさんは作ったケーキ would be interpreted differently, something like “speaking of Mira-san, the cake that she made [is]…”. In fact, you might not even use が - in situations where the use of が would make things ambiguous, it’s often replaced by の.
I know quite a few people have found these lessons from the Cure Dolly series to be enlightening on the subject.
Opinions vary from one extreme to the other (love the series to can’t stand it). Some people can’t bear the videos due to the virtual character and CG voice. I do believe that those videos, even just the first one, will give you a good understanding.
In both these sentences the word doing the job of “is” is です, not は or が. English doesn’t really have a topic marker (and it doesn’t mark subjects with words either, only by position in the sentence) so it’s hard to make a good analogy, but the traditional one is “as for”, e.g. 私は18才です – “as for me, I’m 18”. (If you’ve just been asked your age you can reply simply 18才です “I’m 18”.)
Anyway, this is a difficult topic to grasp, so I agree with @vanilla that the best approach is to be happy initially with a rough understanding which you come back to many times as you get exposure to the language. The explanations will make a bit more sense each time, I think.
I’ve always thought about it like an email. は indicates the title of the email whereas が is simply a regular subject marker for a sentence in the email. Not sure if this is the correct way to think about it but it’s really one of those cases where I’ve just decided to accept the ambiguity and assume I will develop intuition for it with enough immersion.
From my (very limited) understanding this seems like a really difficult topic.
This youtube short confirms it (and there are a few actual tips in the comment section):
That was it, thank you, I couldn’t remember the exact grammar explanation. As for は and が it might sound ambiguous but it is not so much with a grammar textbook and some exercises by your side
He goes from full 日本語上手 confidence to completely questioning himself so quickly xD
Yah, that’s Dogen. He does that.
What helped me wrap my head around the difference a little bit more was the following.
Think about the sentence being split up into two: part before and part after は or が. Depending on which one you use, you are answering a different “question”. In the case of は, the question is about the state (for lack of a better word) of the part before. In the case of が, the question is about who or what is the part after talking. In other words, in case of は the part after is new information (which I think is meant when people say emphasized), for が it’s the part before.
Example:
(question あなたは何歳ですか）
私は18才です (I am 18 )
(question 誰が82才ですか）
私が82才です (It is me who is 82)
This is for sure not a silver bullet, but this particular explanation clicked for me, so maybe for someone else as well.