Its means that its not something that you’ll have to incur any sort of punishment or repercussions for.
Just so we’re clear、its 罰が当たる, not 撥が当たる, so drumsticks aren’t really at play here. Theres also no hitting involved. 当たる just means for something not good to befall an individual in this case. So its just the negative form of a punishment will befall you.
Ooh I see, thank you 
I wasn’t familiar with the ばち reading of 罰. Makes a lot more sense this way.
Question, is it correct to say that while が places emphasis on what comes before it, は places emphasis on what comes after?
More or less, yes. Emphasis is a bit of a vague term though, I prefer to think about it as “what is the thing you’re trying to tell the listener”. For instance if you take the sentence “I did the laundry”, that could be taken (roughly speaking) two ways:
There’s a lot more to the nuance, but explaining all of it takes a whole essay.
Thankfully, someone already wrote said essay so I don’t have to (not that I could, anyway) 
But for now it’s okay to not worry about most of that. You’ll pick up more and more of it as you go along and consume more Japanese material.
Woah this sounds much better!
I’d say it could be taken three ways.
(I think I got all that right haha)
I’m still a 初心者, but I think you did 
Too bad 洗濯はした would sound weird.
(or maybe not hmm…)
Yeah that’s fair, I was trying to work out a way to show what “emphasis” means in this context without making it too contrived, but yeah, you’d just leave the topic out if already known. I decided against including that possibility because it has little to do with the は vs が difference, but my wording does make it a case where omitting it altogether is the natural thing to do, absolutely.
No, は can mark an object just fine. I can see a situation where you’d say something like that.
Maybe a fourth interpretation of “I did the laundry” which is where we’re doubting what was done in the first place, and I’m stating that specifically the laundry was done (and I know this because I did it) Or maybe we’re listing off things and determining whether I did them or not, and laundry is one of the things on my to-do list for today or something.
And then there’s also the fifth interpretation where it’s already established that we’re talking about me doing the laundry but you’re doubting whether I did it or not, at which point I guess… just したよ！ or something? I dunno. This is straying quite a ways from basic when to は and when to が 
feels something like “I did the laundry (but I didn’t do anything else)”.
or someone just asked about the laundry and I repeated the topic to give myself some time to remember if I’ve done it
Perhaps this is not the right place for this question, if it isn’t… please let me know.
I’m in level three and just ran into 下手. I don’t understand why the the reading is: へた and the “Reading Explanation” simply says: “If you’re bad at something and you complain about it, then you’re just a hater (へた). Don’t be a hater.”
Is this an on’yomi or kun’yomi reading? Two kanji makes me expect on’yomi, but it doesn’t seem to match in either case… and without any additional information, I’m confused.
Sorry if this is a stupid question, and thanks in advance for the help!
It’s closest to being a kunyomi of those two, but it’s a different category. A kunyomi is when one kanji is assigned a native Japanese word. This is jukujikun, where 2 kanji (or more) are assigned a native Japanese word, as a set together.
Other common ones you might know include 大人 and 今日.
It’s a 熟字訓 reading, which is a reading that exists for the word as a whole which doesn’t actually come from the component kanji. Other examples of this include 今日 and 大人.
Edit: Noooo…
Thank you for the reply/explanation (and thanks @Belthazar for the nearly identical, but slightly slower, information )
I assume this type of reading is just something that needs to be memorized… not something that can be ‘figured out’ even if you know the various readings of the individual kanji? Whether that’s true or not, are 熟字訓 readings very common? (You both used the same examples, so perhaps not?.. Probably too much to hope for… haha).
They’re not rare, though they make up a smaller percentage of words than the other types you mentioned. Not sure how they compare to mixed on-kun readings or ateji (which are other less common types).
We used the same examples, probably because they are words almost certainly known to beginners, and we’ve answered this question many times 
You’ll come to learn that that kind of thing is common around here whenever @Leebo is involved. 
There are some 熟字訓 words that are fairly common words, but yeah, 熟字訓 don’t make up a huge percentage of the dictionary. Some more examples:
明日 (あした)
従兄弟 (いとこ)
一日 (ついたち)
田舎 (いなか)
小豆 (あずき)
梅雨 (つゆ)
海苔 (のり)
Unfortunately, you just need to learn them when you encounter them.
Heh guys, a question on the language
I was reading the article about Keigo that I got linked here some days ago and started to realize that there’s more than I thought behind it.
The article says that, about Teineigo, many people are already using it without realizing, because it just consists of adding です and the verb form ます at the end of the sentences. Now, I imagine it’s not as simple as that, but what surprised me was that I thought that the です was mandatory, except for some cases such as the い adjectives that already kinda “include” it.
Can someone clarify it?
Also, since it’s unavoidable to encounter some form of keigo since the beginning of the japanese studies, I’m starting to think that having a “panoramic” of what keigo is would be beneficial if not important as early as absolute beginner level, what do you think? This is just a thought
です is used alongside い-adjectives too, I think you may be confusing です with だ here - 赤いだ is incorrect, but 赤いです is fine.
(Disclaimer: I’m not sure how accurate the following is from a linguistics standpoint)
Thing is, です isn’t quite the polite form of だ as it is sometimes referring to. It’s more of a politeness marker that replaces だ where it would be used in the plain form. The reason you don’t use だ with い-adjectives is the い behind an い-adjective is already essentially the copula (i.e. “to be” in English - だ in Japanese), so you don’t need another one. です behind an い-adjective just makes the whole thing polite, without functioning as a copula in itself.
A copula is not necessarily required either, what you need is a predicate (essentially, the part of a sentence that actually gives some information about the subject). That can be a copula (whether explicitly as だ or implicitly as part of an い-adjective), but it can also be a verb. It can even be implied in Japanese if presumed to be already known. I don’t think there’s any part of a sentence that’s always required in Japanese.
As for teineigo, essentially it really is as simple as using です and ます. Other parts of speech (like the pronouns you use, using ください for requests, opting for けれども in place of けど, that sort of thing) coincide with teineigo because they’re also about politeness, but I don’t think they’re inherently part of teineigo the way です and ます are. As long as you have a bit of a feel for what’s a polite way to say things in Japanese, and you use です and ます where appropriate, congratulations, you’re using teineigo.
For a birds-eye view of politeness levels, the Wikipedia article on honorific speech in Japanese does a decent job of explaining them in broad terms.
Okay, I got it, but let me ask a stupid question, if you transform an adjective into its く form by cutting out the い is the だ still included as copula somehow into the adjective?
I’m afraid this part requires some examples for me to understand what you mean
Will also check this
As @yamitenshi mentioned, it is that simple. You probably would also use でしょう and other forms of indirection like 〜と思います to soften stronger statements.
Where it gets a little more convoluted is keigo where on top of specific honorific verbs and conjugations, you would likely use する compounds instead of simple verbs. But this is probably similar to how in English in more formal contexts you would use “fancier” words.
No, but that doesn’t really matter - the く form makes it into an adverb, meaning it will always modify something else (a verb or another adjective). You won’t ever see a く form as a predicate, only ever as part of one or part of something that isn’t a predicate at all.
Also I looked it up quickly: technically there’s no copula included in い-adjectives at all, but い-adjectives are (in origin, anyway) verbs. It’s just that their meaning includes the meaning of the copula (i.e. ascribing a quality to a noun). So there’s no copula involved in the first place (I thought there was and い was some antiquated copula as is the case with な, but I was mistaken).
Okay, so take the sentence “これは赤い車だ”.
The subject is これ. The thing you’re saying about the subject is 赤い車だ - this is the predicate. In this case it includes a copula (だ): this is a red car.
Let’s rephrase the sentence into “この車は赤い”.
Now この車 is the subject, and the predicate is 赤い. You now no longer have an explicit copula in the form of だ, but it’s still technically part of 赤い - you can see it in the translation too, “this car is red”.
Now let’s say something else: “この赤い車で運転した”.
The subject is now no longer part of the sentence. It’s implied to be me (unless context implies otherwise), and the entire sentence is the predicate - or in other words, I’m talking about myself and the information I’m giving you is “I drove this red car”. You’ll also notice there’s no copula in there. Instead, we have a verb.
Now, say you want to confirm: “この車？”
Now we don’t have a predicate, only a subject (this car). However, the predicate (i.e. the question “is this the one you drove?”) is implied, and immediately understandable through context, but not explicitly stated.
And if I confirm: “そう！”
Now we have neither. We have no subject and no predicate, essentially the entire statement I’m making is implicit, and そう defines it as “whatever you just said” basically. So I’m implying the entirety of “I drove the car you just pointed at”, but I’m not actually making that part of my sentence.
(as a technical detail, I think そう is technically part of the predicate as an adverb, but I’m not 100% sure of that)
With all that said, this is nice to know about but not really something you need to concern yourself with. It’s basically a long-winded way of saying “you’re always conveying some information, but the parts of that information that are already clear are left out, with no restrictions on which parts of a sentence always need to be present”. That’s all you need to worry about.