Hello. This might be a dum question but do question words like 何 and どこ go after or before は?
Like for example if I want to say where is the bath, is it:
どこはお風呂ですか
Or
お風呂はどこですか
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You can’t use は as the particle with question words, because it refers only to a known element, and question words are by definition unknown. You have to use が.
That said, with that caveat, either option is valid - どこがお風呂ですか and お風呂はどこですか - but the emphasis is different. The first is more like “where can I find a bath?”, whereas the latter is “that bath you just mentioned, where is it?”
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So が is used with unknown subjects?
Btw the thing about the order is pretty cool honestly
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One of the functions of が in Japanese is to introduce new ideas into a conversation. It’s similar to the difference between “a” and “the” in English. If I opened a conversation with “the dog ate my lunch yesterday”, you’d be confused - “what dog?” would be your natural response. Instead, I’d introduce the new element with “a” - “a dog ate my lunch yesterday” - which I can then follow up with “the”, because the dog is now an element that’s in the conversation - “the dog was green”.
は and が function similarly in some senses, though it’s not precisely analogous in that they function in other ways too, but now we’re getting down into subtleties of は／が usage, and that’s definitely a rabbit hole.
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The way I liked to think about it was
- Particles (は, が, に, を, all that stuff) always follow the word (or clause) they mark. That’s what they’re attached to and they tell you how that thing fits into the rest of the sentence.
- You can’t mark a question-word with は (as @Belthazar notes). Lots of the は-vs-が problem is complicated and hard to get a handle on, but this particular corner of it is a nice simple rule.
- Questions are like a sentence pattern which you hand to the person you’re talking to, and they can hand it back to you with the question-word part of the pattern filled in. The meaning of what you’re asking lines up with the meaning of the answer.
Hmmmm. どこがお風呂ですか seems to have zero google hits. It’s not wrong but I think you’d need some odd context to make it work, like maybe you’re both looking at a floor plan and you know one of the rooms is a bath but it’s not clear what room is what (and the answer would be points-finger-at-plan ここがお風呂です).
お風呂はどこですか can be “that bath you just mentioned…” but it’s also and more likely “I’m going to introduce a new topic, the bath we both know about (e.g. because we’re in a hotel or a house with a bath), and on that topic, where is it?” (or put more naturally, “where is the bath?”), and the answer would be along the lines of “go down this corridor, take the third door on the right”.
This stackexchange question and answer seems good on the topic.
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Oh my gosh tysm
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