Topics and Focuses

Up until now, I have refered to the postposition は (wa) as the subject marker. In reality, it is actually the topic marker. が (ga) is the actual subject marker, but I have some explaining to do here.

A topic is a word in a sentence that your converasation is about. The opposite of a topic is called a focus. A focus is new information brought into a conversation. The thing that makes topics and focuses a hard part of Japanese is that in English we do not often distinguish topics and focuses. Many textbooks give は a translation of "as for," but this translation is not a good thing to cling to and doesn't always help you to understand the use of は and が in certain instances.

Let's look at some of the differences between the two postpositions. が is the subject marker and therefore always marks a subject. は however is much less strict as far as grammar goes. Any role in a sentence can become a topic. So far, all our examples have subjects for topics, but you can also have a time topic, a location topic, or even a object topic. One thing you should know, though, は is added after all postpositions except が and を which are instead replaced entirely by は。 This means you can have compound pospositions like には and では。 (This also goes for the postposition も (mo) which I briefly mentioned in an earlier chapter).

は and が also put emphasis on different parts of the sentence. が stresses what comes before it. は first differentiates the word before it from other topics you might have been talking about and then stresses the rest of the sentence. Remember that I told you not to begin every sentence with わたしは？ If you do, you continue to add unneccessary emphasis to the rest of your sentences.

For example, if someone asks you:

あなたは　どこに　いきますか。
Anata wa doko ni ikimasu ka.
Where are you going?

You should not respond by saying:

わたしは　がっこうに　いきます。
Watashi wa gakkou ni ikimasu.
I'm going to school.

The reason is because restating yourself would redundant. You're already the topic, so you can just omit わたしは (watashi wa) from the sentence and you will be understood. However, consider this short dialogue:

あなたたちは　どこに　いきますか。
Anata-tachi wa doko ni ikimasu ka.
Where are you (plural) going?

わたしは　かえります。
Watashi wa kaerimasu.
I am going home.

In this example, the first person is asking you and the people with you were you are going. Then you reply by saying わたしは to distinguish yourself from the rest of the group. If you and the rest of your group were going to the store, then you could leave out the topic (わたしたちは [watashi-tachi wa])

And then here's an example dialog to show when you would use が。

だれが　がっこうに　いく？
Dare ga gakkou ni iku?
Who's going to school?

わたしが　いく。
Watashi ga iku.
I am (going to school).

Here, we know since だれ is a question word, we use が after it. Also, the answer to だれ is わたし which is then also followed by が。 Question words and answer words can't be topics because you couldn't have talked about something you didn't know about earlier.

は and が is perhaps the most confusing point of grammar there is in Japanese. Even I do not fully understand it yet. For more information on it, you might want to check out the book "Making Sense of Japanese" by Jay Rubin. I've mentioned this book earlier and I highly recommend it to anyone studying Japanese. You can see my review on it in my books page.

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