Welcome to Gaia! ::

こんばんわ、みんあさん。かなだじんがいじんです。
(Good evening everyone. I am KanadajinGaijin.)

And that's about all I'm going to try and say in Japanese right now, being only in Japanese 101.

On that note, however. I've a midterm on Monday, and there's one question I have that my textbook, faithful as it is, cannot help me with.

Can anyone please elaborate on the difference between the わ and が particles? I know that わ is a topic marker, and that が is a subject marker, but I'm afraid the difference between these is not terribly clear to me. Could anyone help me out?

ありがとうございます。

Also, significantly sorry if this has popped up before, I didn't see it anywhere.

Thank you for your help, Mikagisama.

That is something I'd forgotten, sadly enough. Konban-wa as in konban (evening) as the topic, since it's really a shortened from of it's a good night.

Konban wa (fine)desu. (Or something like that)
Night (topic) good is.
Konban wa.
Night.

The wa is therefore the particle, not the hiragana. Thanks for bringing that back to the forefront of my mind.

Heh. It's a funny way of putting it, but it's the direct romanization that I work with anyways, when I'm not putting it down for someone else.

Thanks again, Mikagisama, but I'm still a little fuzzy on the other uses of ga and wa.

For example:
If you say どれがアリスさんのかばんですか。 Why use the が particle instead of saying どれはアリスさんのかばんですか。 ? What situations call for each?

I think a lot of interrogative words are usually followed by ga.

I'm putting this in the help forum.

こんばんわ　And　こんばんは　Are both excepted spellings　私わ　Is not

i think you need to think about it in larger terms. think outside the sentence, lol. sweatdrop when people say は is the topic marker, they mean that that's what you're talking about in a conversation. it's very unlikely that the topic of conversation is どれ. in this specific sentence structure, が is appropriate to use though. but you're actually talking about alice's bag, so if you are going to use は, アリスさんのかばん should have it since that's the topic of conversation and that's what the following sentences will be about. アリスさんのかばんはどれですか。but even that sounds a bit much to me. to me the only time i'd really use wa would be casually saying アリスさんのかばんは? "alice's bag is...(which)?"

also, i believe Aikoさん has posted a couple topics in here about wa and ga, so feel free to check those out. i feel that her lessons give you a better intuitive sense about what they actually mean when you say them and what you're highlighting within the sentence. check out this one here. smile

Thats also because it leads to a weird nonesense sentence, with wa it means:

as for the Which,the bag of alice it is, but is it?

see, no sense.

I don't speak Japanese at home but you got that from anime I can bet. Probably yes but the particle for questions is "ka" not "wa"
Konbanwa is not a question because if you said it in any other language it would sound stupid. "Good evening?" not much usage for that you know.

Here's the way wa/ga was explained to me.

Wa/ga is similar to our way of emphasizing. I was told that in English, it's how you say it that makes it polite, but in Japanese, it's more of what you say.

Let's just say someone was asking you questions. If they asked you:

Who went to the store?
If you were to answer in English, you would probably emphasize the noun that takes the place of 'who', wouldn't you? And thus, use 'が' for yourself.
-I- went to the store.

But if you were asked

You went where?
I went -to the store-.
Then you would put an emphasis on the place, and thus, use 'は' for yourself.