What is the difference between ga and o in japanese

For example :. Sensei to hanashitai n desu ga …. Kyou wa shiken desu ga , benkyou suru jikan ga arimasen. Watashi mo Kawa-chan mo nihongo o benkyou shite imasu. Both Kawa-chan and I are studying Japanese. Watashi mo tabemashita. Watashi, mou tabemashita. For our article on -Te Form, click here. Yuki ga futteiru kara, shigoto ni ikanakute mo ii desu ka? Yuki ga futte mo , shigoto ni ikanakute wa ikemasen.

Please leave us a comment below if you have any questions about these particles. Let us know too if there are any uses of these particles that we neglected to go over in this article.

The rest of the sentence means "ate apple s ". Therefore, we can infer that "As for John We have to supply it by inference when translating into English. It simply marks an element in the sentence that contrasts with something else and sets it apart as the "topic" of discussion. Frequently, the topic overlaps with the subject. However, the same thing can happen when something else is the topic.

John is still the grammatical subject of the sentence - he is doing the action described by the verb John ate. But now, the topic is "apples". In this sentence, the direct object them is implied. Since we are talking about apples, that is probably what John ate. We do not need to repeat the direct object again, since it was already listed in the topic.

This doesn't sound right. It is re-stating information that was already covered in the topic. We do not need to repeat the direct object in the main body of the sentence. In fact, if we already know that John is the one who is doing the eating, we can leave out the grammatical subject too.

You could also translate this sentence as "John ate apples" or "He ate apples". This sounds more natural in English. Notice that in this example sentence, the subject AND direct object are implied. That means that this exact same Japanese sentence might actually mean something very different when translated into English, depending on the context in which it is used.

For example, it might mean "I ate an apple" or "She ate an apple" or "We ate apples". In the absence of other contextual clues, the default assumption is that the speaker is talking about their own actions, so "I" is the default grammatical subject in most simple sentences.

In this very very simple sentence, the subject is assumed to be the speaker. In other words, emphasis tells us what information is already out there and what information we want our listener or reader to sit up and take notice of. They can both show us where emphasis lies, and in doing so they make a distinction between information that is already in our consciousness and information that the speaker or writer wants to introduce — or re-introduce — into our consciousness.

Information can be considered to be in our consciousness if it's already been mentioned in conversation; if it's predictable because of what has already been said; or if it's common knowledge shared by the people involved. The topic is something we already know about, or can guess. It's the "old news," or the news that we believe to be identifiable to our audience. Because it's introducing the perpetrator, or protagonist, this means that we use it to introduce information that isn't considered to be part of our consciousness yet.

So the focus is on the action surrounding our theme. We're saying "you remember such-and-such? We can assume that everyone knows what the moon is. It's therefore ripe to be a possible topic, while leaving other topics in the dark. Once we've introduced the moon as the topic, we can assume that it's also our subject, so it's the moon that's beautiful. This would be a general statement about the moon. It's always beautiful, and everyone agrees.

Here we're picking out the moon as our protagonist and drawing attention to it. We might say this if we just noticed that the moon is particularly beautiful tonight, and we're taken aback by it.

This phrase would be very much at home in a longer sentence that also mentions the topic, such as:. By shining our spotlight on tonight, we're adding the nuance that other nights may not be blessed with such a beautiful moon!

All of these sentences are perfectly fine. The choice is down to the speaker — do we want the moon to be our topic or our subject, or both? What exact nuance do we want to create? Obviously, most speakers don't analyze this when they speak — it just comes naturally. Obviously, though, this depends on the kind of person you are and the kinds of conversations you have! Maybe you're explaining to a young child what the moon looks like!

It means you've looked up at the sky to see a full moon and just then it hit you just how round the moon is! We also know that we can leave out either the subject, or the topic, or indeed both of them, depending on what we feel others already have in their consciousness at that moment. And we can play around with all of this to emphasize whatever we want to emphasize.

Now for the fun part! Let's see how these pieces fit together with each other to produce different meanings, nuances and emphasis in Japanese. There are many cases when both the subject and the topic can happily be left unsaid without causing any ambiguity. One of the very first sentences many people learn in Japanese is an excellent example of how a sentence can be grammatically accurate, but still create unintended nuances, depending on the wider context: self-introductions.

Fair enough. This does indeed mean "I'm so-and-so. When would you shine a spotlight on yourself? Not all that often in self-introductions. If you've just met someone, the chances are they know full well that you're talking about yourself if you give a name.

You're unlikely to be telling them the name of your pet blowfish, and if you are, that too would be clear from the context. You have already established yourself as the topic by the very nature of the situation, so there's no need to labor the point. Then it would be perfectly naturally to say:. Imagine a stranger is looking for you amongst a group of people.

They might ask:. In order to cross everyone else of the list and allow the questioner to end their search, you could reasonably answer:.

I'm Jenny! I'm the person you're looking for! You can probably see why this might come across as a bit over-the-top in a run-of-the-mill self-introduction situation!

Whereas in English we're often forced to state the obvious, in Japanese the most natural thing to do is to leave it out. There are, however, actually very few — if any — situations where you're obliged to include your topic, or your subject, for your sentence to be grammatical.

The majority of the time it comes down to what you think your audience knows and what you want to emphasize.

It's worth mentioning that, when the topic and the subject are different, there's more chance that they'll both be mentioned. This goes back to the desire for clarity. Let's have a look at some examples where both the topic and the subject are explicitly stated in a sentence. Here we establish Kenichi as the topic, then we go on to make Kenichi's head the subject of the next part of the sentence.

Both need to be mentioned explicitly because they can't be guessed from context. If either the topic or the subject is known from context, though, we can leave them out as always. So if we've already established Kanae as our theme, we can just say:. And finally, what do you think happens if we've already established both our subject and our topic? That's right, we can leave them both out:. In English, we know that "she" is Kanae and "them" is the pickled plums, because we've been following along with the conversation.

The main situation in which we see two topics in a sentence is when we want to throw the spotlight onto two or more separate entities. Why would we highlight two or more things? Usually because we want to compare the two. Imagine you want to ask Mami about her goals for next year. Because "goal" is the subject, we are homing in on that only, and excluding other things that Mami might potentially have. This makes the question feel very specific and direct, and a little dry.

Depending on the situation, it could come across as kind of rude! By shining our spotlight on the goals, but not excluding the possibility of other things besides goals that Mami may have, the question sounds softer and more polite. This is because it sounds more humble to be specific and clear-cut about your goal. So this answer carries a neutral tone.

This answer can create a somewhat self-important image, because of the implication that you have other goals besides this one.

By being less specific about the goal, it can also make it sound like you are not entirely serious about it. Imagine you want to compliment your friend on their hair, and you say:. Looking at the English translation, you might wonder why your friend gives you that funny look.