Japanese Particles, redux

Posted: May 24, 2010 | Author: Doug | Filed under: Japanese, Language | 3 Comments »

Make no mistake, one of the most difficult aspects for English speakers learning Japanese language are the little particles.　In the past, I wrote at length about my efforts to master Japanese particles, thanks to helpful book I read, but lately as I continue to practice speaking and writing Japanese I find that native speakers still get confused by my usage. It’s better than before, but someone I am still missing some very fundamental assumptions, so I continue to find these frustration.

Lesser-used, more one-off particles are fairly straightforward to master, but particles that are more fundamental like は and が, or に and で have so many nuances that they can be hard to grasp. Thankfully, after reading Tae Kim’s website and his concise explanations, couple with the previous readings from the grammar and particle book mentioned previously, I feel like I’ve had a small breakthrough.

For example, the relationship between wa and ga continues to elude me, but Tae Kim provides some key points:

The first particle we will learn is the topic particle. The topic particle essentially identifies what it is that you’re talking about, basically the topic of your sentence. Let’s say a person says, “Not student.” This is a perfectly valid sentence in Japanese but it doesn’t tell us much without knowing what the sentence is talking about. The topic particle will allow us to express what our sentences are about. The topic particle is the character 「は」.

So は (wa) fills in the question of “what are we talking about”?

As for “ga”, he makes a critical point in contrast:

You can also think about the 「が」 particle as always answering a silent question. For example, if we have 「ジムが魚だ」, we are answering a question such as “Who is the fish?” or “Which person is the fish?” or maybe even “What food does Jim like?” Or given the sentence, 「これが車」, we can be answering the question, “Which is the car?” or “What is the car?” The 「は」 and 「が」 particles are actually quite different if you think of it the right way. The 「が」 particle identifies a specific property of something while the 「は」 particle is used only to bring up a new topic of conversation.

This is something the book linked above had mentioned somewhat, but I didn’t quite get the point. Again, particles are not easy to grasp at first for English-speakers until someone explains it just right, and then it’s easy to notice afterward. Here, the key is that は “wa” addresses what’s being talked about, while が “ga” addresses the who,what,where questions.

Ok, that’s very helpful right there, but another frequent confusion I have is with は “wa” and に “ni”. The latter is a time-related particle, but I assumed it was always used with time. As Tae Kim points out, the usage is actually more specific:

The 「に」 particle can specify a target of a verb.

Ah, the target of a verb, but what about time?

The idea of a target in Japanese is very general and is not restricted to motion verbs. For example, the location of an object is defined as the target of the verb for existence （ある and いる）. Time is also a common target.

Ah, now I get it! I was missing this critical detail. That’s why 明日は働く (ashita wa hataraku, “Tomorrow, I will work”) makes sense, but 明日に働く doesn’t. As my wife explained, the second one sounds incomplete like it’s missing the topic. And as we know the topic marker is は, which is why Japanese frequently would get confused by something I wrote.

Thank you Tae Kim and thank you Kakuko Shoji (author of the book)! I am eager to start practicing this more, now that it’s correct. Armed with the right information, and with enough practice to internalize it, I feel like I might get this problem more under control.

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