I’ll be honest about how I feel about Jay Rubin: he’s often associated with Cure Dolly, and because I find many of her ideas controversial or very different from the Japanese teaching mainstream, I tend to be suspicious of them. Now, some people find Cure Dolly’s explanations very intuitive, and good for them! Perhaps it’s the same with Rubin, or he’s even better. Also, there’s no guarantee that the mainstream has the best approach, though it’s helpful to know mainstream terminology because that helps you understand what people educated by the mainstream mean. I just wanted to be upfront in any case by prefacing my post with this.
Now then, the reason I’m here…
Out of curiosity, have you heard of this explanation?
This ‘five differences’ explanation dates from 1996, and was explained by a Japanese linguist in a book. This is the explanation I used to learn how to differentiate the two particles, even if it didn’t clear all my doubts straightaway, and I soon discovered that using the right particle was more a matter of spotting contextual clues and being aware of typical usage.
The translation in the post that I linked to isn’t mine, and I frankly don’t like it, but it’s mostly comprehensible, so I’m leaving it there. If you want, I can try to translate the Japanese article myself, though there are definitely going to be a few technical terms that I’ll get stuck on.