❗New video on the て-form just came out, click here to watch now! th-cam.com/video/HAdmKhVjVs8/w-d-xo.html ❗ This is the MOST FUNDAMENTAL video that you need to understand as it is the basis to EVERYTHING moving forward in Japanese structure. Feel free to ask questions if you don't understand anything as I can't stress how every video moving forward will probably end up pointing back here-- that's just how important this is!
Amazing job explaining this, it blows my mind how just one person can clarify months of lazy studying on my own part and not clearly taught textbook Japanese. Huge thanks, glad I subbed to this channel!
I'm glad I was able to clarify the が particle to you, and thanks for watching! If you have anything else you're confused about please feel free to bring it up on our Discord so we can all talk about it and maybe find a solution together! 😄
I'm only helping to spread the message. Until schools and textbooks actually start to adopt this approach, it's still (for some reason) a secret sauce.
@@Suzukixd89 I don't think "real" is the right word. It's just that her model is the best fit for English speakers. The reason it's hard to say it's "real" is because this model would not be needed for native Japanese people. So technically the "real" model is to do exactly what Natives do and go without a guide- let your brain figure it out itself.
@@Suzukixd89 Precisely that. Doesn't matter that it isn't the "real" approach. It's the method that works best for English speakers (or any other language where the subject must be visible).
I had to rewatch this video multiple times as I'm new to Japanese grammar. I couldn't fully grasp everything you were saying until I explored cure dolly sensei's videos, saw many example sentences, and tried to remember what the particles were doing with each sentence. Yes this does mean I had to fully grasp most of the particles in order to understand this video. This video is super important so if you were to do a series on this, try to gear it toward beginners. Beginning with short easy to understand sentences and then with longer more complex sentences. I would also refrain from assuming we understand anything such as 辛いもの, I personally did not understand that mono turned this into things which made it hard to grasp the sentence (7:05). It's obvious to me now but before almost every word in the video was new to me so I couldn't focus on the particle itself. Maybe this video wasn't meant to teach at all levels and had a different goal but when you said updated model of cure dolly sensei, my first thought was to learn from you, student to student. Thanks Juls you're one of the best at showing us how to study, you just need a different approach when it comes to teaching Japanese itself.
Just saw the comment, sorry for the late reply. First of all thank you for watching the video and leave such thoughtful feedback! Yea I think I'll do more videos talking about this exact same topic but framed differently. This video was aimed more towards people who already knew SOME Japanese grammar hence the format of "This sentence does NOT mean this, it instead means THIS". Your feedback is very valuable and I totally understand what you mean! Hopefully I'll nail a way to present this to beginners in the future!
Thanks for the videos! I'm still near the start of my journey, but I can already tell your grammar series and overall learning method will be very helpful!
Thank you very much and I'm glad my videos are helpful for you! Don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or want help by joining the Discord server!
This made SO much sense! Ive been struggling with the logic behind the particles for years and only thing my teachers/professors say is "just read a lot and it will come naturally" Thank you so much for this!
You are the first person I literally see explaining what this kind of sentences LITERALLY means. I'm a Japanese Language teacher in my country, and I also explain this to my students. However, being a native Spanish speaker is an advantage not only for me but also for my students because our language, despite being quite different from Japanese, actually has some aspects quite similar. (私（に）は) 猫が好きだ is translated in Spanish as "(A mí) me gustan los gatos." or depending on context "(A mí) me gusta el gato." While "gustar" is still a verb like "to like" and not and な adjective like "好き", in Spanish the subject here is... ¡"los gatos"! or "el gato". "Gustar" is what we call in Spanish an "affective verb", a verb in which the subject make the indirect object to feel something. The "(A mí) me" is the indirect object in the sentence, meaning "to me". Interestingly enough, although we don't have a theme particle like "は" (we can indicate something as the theme of the sentence in a similar way as in English), it makes complete sense in Japanese because you can say 私 *に* は猫が好きだ. That 私に means exactly "A mí", like in Spanish! I also have explained the difference between が and を when using たい, but your explanation and other from a grammar dictionary I have make sense with the one I found first years ago and it's the one I use: りんごが食べたい makes emphasis that is the apple the thing you want to eat (your explanation), the desire to eat one is strong (dictionary's explanation), and you don't have an apple in front of you (the explanation I found and I use). Meanwhile りんごを食べたい does not make that emphasis, since the subject is probably 私が (your explanation), the desire of eating an apple is not so strong (dictionary's explanation) and I have THIS apple in front of mine, so I want to eat THIS one given that's at my reach (the explanation I found and I use). Thinking about it, neither explanation contradict one another :o Great video!
Yo también he notado eso. Pese a ser idiomas tan diferentes, el español y el japonés encuentran senderos muy similares para llegar al mismo destino. Me gusta tu ejemplo. Es más, se me ocurre una buena comparación. Si yo digo "りんごが食べたい", es más bien como decir "me apetece una manzana". Como podemos ver, en ambos casos es el sujeto la manzana. "Quiero comer una manzana" sí sería más bien "りんごを食べたい".
I think the key in order to understand this is to realise that Japanese has fundamentally different views of the world. For Westerners, the person is the most important thing in the world, more so than crepes, trees or cars. Therefore we are the center of all action. But in Japanese this is not the case. Eating is not something "I" do, rather, it is something that happens between the crepe and I. It sounds weird and ridiculous, but that´s exactly why these particles are hard to tell apart. Amazing explanation.
Yes! That's exactly what it is. Once we can grasp that the whole world view is different, it truly does change our comprehension of the language and affects what we're saying.
Yeah, I’ve been learning off and on for about a year and a half now and what seems to be emerging for me is that Japanese seems to be more often intent on directly communicating experience, rather than to ‘describe reality’ in some way. Does that make sense? Even with 思う, I’m picking up on a sense of mental images being experienced in the mind, rather than ‘me’ (as an agent more than a witness) doing this thing called thinking. It’s still pretty vague to me though, and I’m curious to find out whether a clearer understanding of the way life is conceptualised in Japanese language will unfold for me.
This video alone unlocked reading Japanese for my brain 🤯 Before I struggled understanding the role and meaning of the different particles, as sentences always were translated to the correct English meaning, while it is so much easier to understand when translating each part of the sentences separately and then combining it all into the full meaning afterwards. Thanks for your videos, they're really helpful 🙏
Wow, this is the first time i've seen that concept, where did you first read about it? Once heard about the "invisible は" but honestly this is kind of a game changer, thanks for the vid
Cure Dolly sensei is the one who taught me this concept, I believe she learned it from a Dr. Jay Rubin. . Most of the information about the Ø Pronoun in Japanese is hidden behind Academic and Phd papers. Not sure why they don't teach this most commonly! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The visible ha is nothing new - it is usually taught as: what is not necessary to understand the sentence will be left out. And often the topic of a sentence is clear from the context, hence there is no ha needed.
I understood the "God particle" instead of "ga particle" at the start of the video.😅 I thought it was a bit sarcasm, as it is not far from the truth in Japanese language... Thank you for the videos - extremely helpful!
Thank you for giving the credit to Cure Dolly sensei. I missed her...😢 Also, the part where you mention the food doesn't need to be sentient in order to make me want to eat it, that's correct. But remember that Japan has Shintoism culture where all things have souls. So to Japanese (at least ancient people who created the language), the food is actively doing something doesn't sounds weird to them. We see this more clearly in ukemi (受身) form on the last part of your video. 水が犬に飲まれた can be translated as "The water receive drink action on the dog". This will be consistent with water still be the subject and it receive, that's why it's called 受身, literally means "receive form"
I have watched several videos regarding the difference between が & は, including those taught by Japanese people. This one gives the simplest and clearest explanation, and it makes perfect sense logically. どうもありがとうございました！😊
Thanks for watching and commenting! It's very difficult to be consistent when I run 2 channels and have 3 jobs, so I'll try my best to at least get this 3 part series out consistently. Maybe 1 a week! :)
I had a thought during your crepe example. Do you think the sentence structure of "the crepe making me want to eat it" within the language might be one of the reasons why Japanese culture often has a lot of anthropomorphism and cuteness to it? I could definitely imagine a crepe or other objects being life-like with that form of wording as opposed to the English version of "I want to eat [the thing]."
I think you misrepresented what Dolly-sensei was saying in your examples. First of all, Dolly does NOT use "subject" and "actor" interchangeably. If you listen carefully to her lessons, you find that she OCCASIONALLY refers to what が marks as the "actor", but that's only to help illustrate her point that が always marks the main do-er of a sentence, i.e. the subject. Second, she never once referred to the dog as the "actor" in her lesson about the receptive れる/られる form and, in fact, said the exact opposite ―― that the dog *isn't* the actor since it's not the one doing the receiving. That would be the water. The part where you showed Dolly referring to the dog as the "actor" is from a completely different lesson unrelated to this concept. That lesson was about the causative せる/させる form, where she clearly explains that those types of sentences always have at least two actors (one for せる/させる and one for the verb it attaches to). This is completely consistent with her が lessons, because she never once said or implied that the が-marked subject/actor is the ONLY actor that can ever be in a sentence. Yes, が always marks the subject, and the subject is always an actor; but an actor isn't always the subject, so actors don't always get marked by が. She gave the example sentence "Øが 犬に 肉を 食べさせた", where "Ø" (the one who compelled the dog to eat) is the main actor and the subject, thus getting が, while "dog" (the one who ate) is another actor, but is also functioning as a target, which gets it に instead of が. This makes "dog" an actor, but not the subject. Nothing Dolly said about this was confusing or contradictory in any way.
First of all, thank you for posting this comment! . To respond, could I summarize your comment as the following points? 1. Dolly does not use "subject" and "actor" interchangeably except when she does 2. Dolly does not refer to the dog as the "actor" in one lesson, but does in another 3. Our definition of what an "actor" is, is not aligned 4. She never said that the が-marked subject/actor is the ONLY actor 5. The "actor" marked に is the actor because it is also functioning as a "target" . I will be responding to these 5 points so please let me know if I have misunderstood you in some way. . 1. This comment already is a confusing statement and is an example of what Dolly fights against, exceptions. My video is trying to point out that there is no need to ever call the "subject" an "actor" because it is already understood what a subject does. Calling it an "actor" adds unnecessary confusion (such as the situation of having "2 actors" which we will see later). . 2. This shows inconsistency. You can't say "she never once referred to the dog as the actor" when she DOES because she refers to the EXACT same sentence in 2 lessons. It doesn't matter that it wasn't "in her lesson about れる/られる", it's still the same sentence. . I can't say "猫が好き" means "I like cats" in one lesson, then in another lesson, re-use 猫が好き and say that "the cat is the subject". These 2 statements contradict and are inconsistent. . Secondly, YOU contradicted yourself in your own comment. In your 5th paragraph, YOU referred to the dog as the "second ACTOR". So if you say that Dolly has NEVER referred to the dog as an actor, either Dolly is wrong or you are. . Furthermore, the reason you even needed to bring this up in the first place is a perfect example of why point no.1 needs to be clarified. Had she NEVER referred to the subject as the "actor" EVER (because doing so is unneeded), this point would not even be listed. . 3. I am unsure what your definition of the "actor" is as you've contradicted yourself in your comment. So allow me to define "actor" and let's see whether we're on the same page. An "actor" is anything that does something. Just because a lot of the time the actor HAPPENS to be the subject, doesn't mean there's any relationship that Actor = Subject or vice versa. . By this definition, in the sentence Øが 犬に 肉を 食べさせた, you CAN INDEED say that there are "2 actors": The Ø and the 犬. This means that Dolly is indeed right about calling the 犬 an actor, and she has indeed done so. . HOWEVER, this goes back to point no.1 again. WHY is there a need to call the が anything else BUT the subject? Why do we need to say that there are "2 actors" when we can very easily say "there is the subject marked が as it does 100% of the time, and there is the actor marked に". . What advantage does calling the が an "actor" give? What's wrong with the word "subject"? . 4. I never said that either. . 5. You are correct. I plan to emphasize this point a bit more in a dedicated video about the に particle, but I found it unnecessary to include in this video. Worry not, I will not be like point no.1 and contradict myself in that video.
@@JouzuJuls Yes, you indeed misunderstood me. My actual points were as follows: 1. Dolly does not use "subject" and "actor" interchangeably *at all.* She calls the subject an actor in the same way that you can call a square a rectangle or a cat an animal. All A is B, but not all B is A. This is basic logic. I don't understand how you see the two as "interchangeable". 2. Dolly refers to the dog as the "actor" *in a completely different sentence in an unrelated lesson* which has nothing to do with what you explained in the video. 3. She never said that the が-marked subject/actor is the ONLY actor (again, just like how squares aren't the only rectangles) 4. The "actor" marked に (again, in a completely unrelated sentence and lesson) is marked as such because both a) it's also a target, and b) が is already marking the other (primary) actor of the sentence, the subject, like it always does. If either of those weren't true, then it wouldn't be marked with に. - "You can't say 'she never once referred to the dog as the actor' when she DOES because she refers to the EXACT same sentence in 2 lessons." Ok, now you're just being deliberately obtuse. We both know damn well that they were NOT the exact same sentence. One sentence was "水が犬に飲まれた" and the other was "犬に肉を食べさせた". - "YOU contradicted yourself in your own comment. In your 5th paragraph, YOU referred to the dog as the 'second ACTOR'. So if you say that Dolly has NEVER referred to the dog as an actor, either Dolly is wrong or you are." Again, you're being deliberately obtuse. Re-read my 3rd paragraph sentence. I clearly said she never referred to the dog as an actor IN HER OTHER LESSON, which again, was in a completely different sentence about a completely different topic. - "The reason you even needed to bring this up in the first place is a perfect example of why point no.1 needs to be clarified" Please explain what needs to be clarified here. Is it the concept that an "A" can be a "B" but not always the other way around? Because that's basic logic, my guy. Dolly even explain this point as well in her first lesson about だ. - "I am unsure what your definition of the 'actor' is as you've contradicted yourself in your comment. It's actually very simple. An "actor" is whatever is doing a verb. A subject is always doing a verb, so a subject is always an actor. But as we see in せる/させる sentences, sometimes there are multiple verbs, so there must also be multiple actors in those cases. "水が犬に飲まれた" has 1 verb, so there is 1 actor. "犬に肉を食べさせた" has 2 verbs, so there are 2 actors. WHERE IS THE CONTRADICTION HERE?? At this point, this seems less like misunderstanding and more like intellectual dishonesty. Dude, if you're so dead set on calling Dolly wrong that you have to deliberately misquote her, act like 2 different sentences/concepts are the same just to call her out on making 2 different comments about them, pretend like you don't understand basic logic, and then proceed to project YOUR apparent confusion of it onto other people, calling it "contradicting" or "confusing" or whatnot, just because YOU aren't making any sense of it, then why bother giving her props or including her in your videos in the first place? If anything, this just feels like a middle finger to all the hard work Dolly put into those videos to make it easier for us to understand this language.
@@jpnpod8277 I'm not sure why youre coming at me so hard and I'm sorry if I offended you in some way. As I said in the beginning of this video, I may have made some mistakes and I may make a video saying that the stuff in this video is wrong in the future. Unsure why you think I'm "dead set" on something when I'm asking you to clarify your point so I can better understand where you think I'm wrong. . So from your reply here's what I can see: . You say that the subject is always the actor. I agreed to this. I simply asked why this must be said? Why not leave it unsaid and just call the subject the subject? . To put it into your anology, if there were 2 shapes on a table, a square and a rectangle. What paints a clearer picture: "There are 2 rectangles on the table" or "There is a square and a rectangle on the table". Neither is wrong, one is just more clear. No reason we need to call a square a rectangle even if it is- the word square exists. . You seem to not understand that れる/られる are also verbs just like せる/させる. . If "犬に肉を食べさせた" has 2 verbs and therefore 2 actors, so does "水が犬に飲まれた". That's your contradiction.
@@JouzuJuls Ok, NOW I see what you mean with your contradiction claim and I wish you had worded it that way earlier. I actually did already know that れる/られる are verbs too, but I forgot to take that into consideration when I was forming my argument. I responded the way I did because I thought you were being intellectually disingenuous and ignoring details for the sake of your argument, like when you said the two sentences were exactly the same. They weren't, but now I see that the logic they both use are the same, which is probably what you actually meant. I apologize for that and I take back everything I said regarding it. If we take the same logic for both sentences, then yes, you are 100% correct that Dolly contradicted herself by calling the dog an "actor" in one case but not the other. But as for you question about the terms "subject" and "actor", let me ask you something: In all situations, would you deny or ignore the fact that squares have 4 sides and 4 right-angles just because it's called a square? Are we suppose to just magically know what a square even is in the first place without ever being told? We're not talking about two random things on a table getting labelled, we're talking about how we describe and represent concepts with words. Not only does calling the subject an actor help to illustrate what it actually does in a sentence, but it also makes it easier to say various things in certain contexts, like explaining grammar points. What's easier to say, "せる/させる sentences must have at least 2 actors" or "せる/させる sentences must have at least 1 actor and a subject"? One is redundant, takes more words just to get the same point across, and includes unnecessary information (the properties specific to a subject are not relevant here, only the fact that it's an actor). By your logic, we should just drop the word "animal" from our vocabulary altogether simply because they each have their own specific name anyway, as that apparently "paints a clearer picture". Instead of Animal Planet, we should call it "Lion/tiger/bear/panther/gorilla/wolf/giraffe/etc...." Planet, with the names of every single one in the title. The same can be said for every other umbrella term there is, like "vehicle", "song", "genre", etc.
@@jpnpod8277 Thank you for correcting my choice of words, I should have been more specific, you are right. . The rest of your argument seems to revolve around the assumption that without ever calling the Subject an "actor", the only other way we could possibly know what the subject does is "to just magically know". . As if it is literally impossible to understand what a square is without ever being told it's a rectangle. . So if someone were able to explain what a subject does without ever calling it an actor, would you consider that magic? . Is this whole video magic...? Cuz if it is I might just advertise it as the "magic solution" 😂 . Btw you also said that having 2 seperate words here is "redundant" and that the "properties specific to a subject are not relevant here". . So putting aside that this whole video is a video about subjects in Japanese... . Let's remember that Dolly's system of breaking down Japanese requires you to identify the subject, and that the subject is in every sentence. And I don't just mean "this one particular sentence" which could be implied when you said the word "here", I mean a universally applicable breakdown of all Japanese sentences. . So to better illustrate my point about why calling the subject an actor is redundant, let's give the words a few labels. . Subject = A Predicate = B Actor = C Sub-clause action = D . And we establish 2 facts: - The sentence we are working with is an A does B sentence with C does D as a sub clause - A is C . You are saying that having "A" is redundant and therefore we should say "C does D within C does B". . Now in order to follow the system and break down this sentence, you must find A. But there are 2 C's, so which is A? . But here's the gotcha part. That's not a hard question to answer because A is the one doing B. The point is that you had to ask the question of "what is A" in the first place. . That's not a question you have to ask if you just wrote A does B. Redundancy!
I was a bit out on this video for a bit, but the idea of the topic particle existing in order to divert agency away from the speaker to an outside force makes a lot of sense in the context of Japanese culture. That might be one of those light bulb moments for understanding the nuance of a language.
This mindset is unfortunately the result years of が and は being completely mistaught as this mysterious and hard to understand creature. It is not. が is very simple to understand and MUST be understood to develop a proper grasp of Japanese. I would advise ditching literally everything you've been told about が and watching this video with a blank canvas. The only reason people say "just go by intuition" is because they fail to explain what can very easily be explained without exception. Yet they still refuse to revise this way of teaching. Not only does traditional Eihongo grammar fail to explain fundamental grammar points, it also reinforces DESTRUCTIVE ideas like this.
@@JouzuJuls well, I watched a video by another dude who said that は puts emphasis on what comes after it and が puts emphasis on what comes before it, the dude is tokini Andy I think. I understand both explanations, but it is still kind of confusing, are they mutually acceptable or not, I am very confused rn. But I'll force my 2 brain cells to work and figure it out.
@@sweetdurt2143 Yes, I also said this at 10:14 (read the slides). If Tokini Andy said only that and left it, then he only explained WHAT it does without going into detail about WHY it does it. To actually develop a solid understanding of Japanese, you must actually take a look at the structure instead of the surface level. Traditional textbooks (Like Genki that Tokini Andy uses) don't do this. They come up with some nonsense that confuses learners who don't know better and brush all their holes and mistakes off as "just develop intuition". Japanese structure is the most flawless way of looking at Japanese grammar (and thus the most useful). The most fundamental concept clashes with traditional Eihongo textbooks as well as Tae Kim, as both of those have clear flaws that get exposed by Japanese Structure. Tokini Andy seems to also have realized this and 7 months ago made a video quoting Dr.Jay Rubin and teaching the Øが as well. This video by Cure Dolly explains why mixing the nonsense of Eihongo with Japanese Structure does not work by taking a detailed look at why Tae Kim is fundamentally flawed: th-cam.com/video/-JuHi-yKGFc/w-d-xo.html
@JouzuJuls eihongo is kind of like our version of japanglish. English is taught so poorly in japanese school in a similar way, such as teaching English as if it is japanese. This is probably why most japanese people cannot speak any English to English speakers, but can only speak English to japanese English speakers despite English being a mandatory subject for japanese students. Its time people realize different languages are... different. They need to be taught with their own context rather than related to the native language one is coming from.
8:00 i learned the たい form as just someone wanting to do something, which i guess would be the simplified version of "making someone want something". however i don't quite understand it the way you defined the たい form, so i'd be glad if you could tell me where you learned it like that, so i cant look it up and understand the たい form further than what i know.
Yo! Sorry for the super delayed reply! TH-cam flagged this comment as spam so I didn't get to see it! . I think the problem starts with you thinking たい is a "form", it is not a "form". たい is just a helper adjective. . I can link you to the resource that my teacher made for you to look into it yourself! th-cam.com/video/vk3aKqMQwhM/w-d-xo.html
@@rina-ht4cc No worries! It might seem pretty complex at first but I promise that once you understand it, Japanese will make complete & total sense! 頑張って！😁
@@JouzuJuls oh yeah, it made perfect sense to me when the teacher explained it. it aligned perfectly with my own perception of the phenomenon too. however my nice feeling of accomplishment was soon gone when i heard what happened to the teacher. I've never heard of her before but she seemed a very dedicated and lovely person, i feel very sorry. well, that gives all the more reason to communicate my appreciation to the lovely people in our learning community that are still around. thank you for being around helping people learn better and contributing to this community! i wish you the very best, take care!
@@rina-ht4cc Glad her explaination was able to clear everything up! . Yea, she was a VERY nice person and dedicated herself to helping people even at her last moments. . I remember when I had questions about Japanese without knowing her situation and she would still be apologizing for slow replies and stuff. Keep in mind I was a complete nooby at that time too. . If only we knew what she was going through back then... . Oh well, at least I can try my best now to continue her legacy!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think a better way to think about は and が would be to think about them as "distance relative to the speaker/conversation" or "direct relevance to the speaker". は would serve as the "distant topic" or "background": (what you're indirectly talking about), while が would serve as the "object close to you" ie: (what you're directly talking about). This would explain why は serves to indicate a general topic but doesn't allow further comment about it. For example: "The pages are so flimsy and the contents are not interesting. We are talking about a book, by the way." Where the "pages and contents" are が and the "book" is は as we are directly commenting on the pages and content and indirectly commenting on the book itself. Another rule I read about the は particle is that it should *not* be used to introduce new elements into the conversation. It should be reserved to things that are already mentioned or are obviously present from the context.
Hey Juls, I understand that は is closest to "as for" which is in your slides but you also say it marks the topic. 5:28 is when you introduce "0 が" saying "it" becomes the subject. So I'm confused on how "watashi/me" is not a subject as well. From my understanding, your sentence is: 'as for Chad, he is Japanese'. Chad and he are both subjects I thought. But you are saying "Chad" is a topic and "he" is the subject. I do not think you ever mentioned what the difference between a topic and subject is in the video. I'm a native english speaker and I would say most people use them interchangeably but you might have a different definition which I believe is why I'm not understanding the concepts. If I'm wrong about anything correct me please c: and thanks for the video
Oh damn I JUST saw this comment! Sorry for the super late response! . The simple answer is to not treat Japanese as English. Throw everything you know about English grammar away, throw your expectations about what "Subjects" and "Objects" are supposed to be in English- because English is not Japanese. . I know this is a pretty "nothing" answer but the difference between the topic and subject is that the topic is marked by は and the subject is marked by が. I doesn't really matter what they are past this!
"It" isn't a perfect translation for the zero-ga. The point of it being a "zero" is that it can be literally anything, but in English, "it" can only be third person, inanimate, and singular
Sorry to comment so late, but I’ve always wondered. What’s the distinction between “spicy food is likable to him” vs “he likes spicy food”? I can maybe see it in some convoluted sense like, this person may thing something is likable, but he may not like it himself. If I’m wrong, do let me know. But to me, they both pretty much convey the same meaning to me. It’s like saying “ I went to the store today” vs “the store is the place that which I went today”. Once again, I could be wrong, but that’s how I view it. Also I know you get this a lot, but I absolutely LOVE your channel. I’ve been practicing for years, still struggle, but you have made a bunch of stuff clearer for me and I’ve watch multiple of your videos at least 5 times. I can almost recite your conjugation video. I’m super impressed with your speaking skills and pronunciation. I wish I could sound that good, but I get too embarrassed when I speak. Anyway thanks and much love brother Edit: also one more question. What’s the difference between the subject and topic? I mean, I get it in certain examples, but is it not subjective sometimes? I could be talking about how I got hit by a ball in gym class, and I assume I would be the subject here and ball is the topic. But what if I wanna make the focus on me rather than the ball, wouldn’t I perceive myself as the topic and the ball is just there, or can the sentence stay the same and the subject/topic change?
Hi there! Lemme try to help you out. The difference between "he likes spicy things" and "spicy things are likable" is the subject of the sentence. Yes, ultimately- meaning wise, both mean the same thing and you're just writing it differently. But this difference between what is "normally written" in English and Japanese highlights the different ways these languages view the world. In the normal English "he likes spicy food", English likes to comment on the person who feels something about something else. "Spicy food is likeable" sounds weird because of the preference to out the "ego" as the subject in English. Conversely, 辛いものが好き shows Japanese's preference to NOT show the "ego" and talk about the thing that is exerting the feeling of being likable. 彼が辛いものを好き is not grammatically wrong- but it's just weird because highlighting the Ego like this is just not what Japanese people do. When you hear people saying that languages shape the way you see the world, this is what they mean!
Oh, your other question! "topic" is a concept foreign to native English speakers for sure. To put it simply, the subject is whatever must exist in the sentence (visible or not) in order for the sentence to convey what you mean with additional context to support you. For example, this sentence is often used to confused Japanese natives about their own grammar: 象は鼻が長い (as for the elephant, nose is long) You can remove each element here to see whether the sentence stays intact- or flip the particles. For example, if you remove "as for the elephant", the sentence stays in tact as long as you have the context of talking about elephants. However, if you remove "nose", you get left with "as for elephants, it is long". That doesn't make sense even with the context. Or if you flip it to be like "as for noses, elephant is long", don't think I need to say it but that clearly isn't the same meaning. Hence with this example, we can prove that が always marks the subject no matter what, and that the subject is omnipresent everywhere. While は helps clarify what we're talking about. If the question is- I have a thing that can be either the subject or topic- how do I know which to mark it with. Then it's a matter of getting enough comprehensible input to figure out what's the most natural on a case by case basis.
@@JouzuJuls ooh I see this actually makes a lot of sense, thank you so much. I’ve heard this point before, and that’s why Japanese doesn’t use “I” so often while talking, because it’s perceived as arrogant or selfish. I never extended that idea past that and into the sentences though. That’s really cool and thank you for explaining it so well.
@@JouzuJuls ah I get it. That’s actually really simple. At least if I’m understanding it properly. は is used to just state the thing we’re talking about, and が is what’s used to talk about said thing? So if I wanted to say something like 「僕は仕事がめちゃ面倒だ」would this be a correct sentence? I’m sure I got something wrong here, but would I be the topic and my work be the subject? Or did I flip the two and I should be the subject?
@@Adonisrose7493 Remember that every sentence must have an A car and B engine (see the next video in the series to learn more). A car is what is marked が, and the B engine is the comment that modifies the A car. It is "logical" as it effects the logic of the sentence. は is "non-logical", it doesn't influence the sentence grammatically as much as it sets up the expectation in the listeners mind. Remember that the subject is necessary is every sentence, so to test if your sentence is right, we can simply test whether what you marked as が was the thing you wanted to comment about. The way you said it with 僕は implies that YOUR work is annoying. Everybody else's work? Dunno anything about that- but YOUR work only is annoying. If you dropped 僕は, that would be the most natural way of expressing this. "Work is very annoying". If you dropped 仕事が and left it as "it"- you would get "as for me, it is very annoying." Not it. If you flipped it to "as for work, I am very annoying", that doesn't make sense and you just called yourself annoying. If you marked 仕事 with は instead, then left が as it- this is also possible and also the most natural depending on context. As in 仕事はめちゃ面倒だ. "As for work, it is very annoying." This would be a comment on not anybody's work in particular- but the fact that humans have to work in general- THAT'S annoying.
Simply you could take out what comes before は the sentence still means something.but maybe just not complete...however if you remove what comes before が the sentence wont mean anything at all.. grammatically imcomplete. and as for をyou can simply see it as an object. just a bit of my opinion if it helps😊
@@banzyyy7155 As a linguistics nut and someone who has been studying Japanese for 7+ years, this video does indeed make sense and as far as I can tell, is accurate. He does cram a lot in the video, however, and a lot of his examples are a bit wordy/awkward English, but overall it's a good video. A similar English equivalent to "0が" is the implied subject "you" in imperitive sentences. E.g. "Go make your bed" = "[You] go make your bed". But, of course, we don't say "You go make your bed", and it sounds very awkward to a native English speaker.
That's alright! He crammed a lot in the video, and the content might be too advanced for whatever Japanese level you're at right now. I've been studying Japanese for a long time, and I study English linguistics for fun, and I was just barely able to catch everything.
7:12 I understand this sentence but what if the topic of "he'" is unknown Is the sentence 彼が辛いものが好きだ grammaticaly correct? If not how would I say the sentence if "he" is not known.
I have been learning Korean for a while and I found out I might go to Japan in the next 2 years so now I am learning both. The particles in both languages work exactly the same. 는/은 = は 를/을=を 가/이=が 가 and が both sound like “ga” It is so cool to see how these languages are related!
I find that in my university course, My Japanese Native teacher will occasionally pause on an explanation in the yookosou textbook and say "that's kind of not right" - but she explains it as written anyway because she doesn't know any better way to explain it in English. Resources like Jules and Cure Dolly - I believe - is getting me though uni haha
The problem with the word Topic and Subject is that they are so related and often used interchangeably - take this definition that google gave me for topic - "a matter dealt with in a text, discourse, or conversation; a subject." - notice the last word ? And here's another one - "A topic is a subject. It's what you're discussing or what a newspaper article is about, the theme of a documentary, or the focus of your term paper." This one basically says that a topic is a subject so how are we to distinguish between the は and が particles
For a moment I thought that you're talking about the God Particle (as particle physicists call the Higgs bozon) and I was like "what is happening here?…" :D
I‘m not sure if I misunderstood something but from the way you explained it, if が indicates the subject, why wouldn’t クレープが食べたい mean “the crepe wants to eat” ?
Awesome! This question is very valid and proves you understand what's going on. Allow me to explain how this works. You know how in math, √2 is ±2, but most people write "2" and forget about "-2" ? This is very similar. 私が食べたい actually simultaneously means both "I am eat want" and "I am eat wanting"; and similarly, クレープが食べたい simultaneously means "crepe is eat want" and "crepe is eat wanting". This is not because a single sentence has "2 meanings", more that we can't accurate describe/translate たい into English without it having 2 interpretations. (Hence the weird "eat-wanting"/"eat-want-enducing" term that was used). How do Japanese people make the choice to know which is which? It's something called "the rule of absurdity", which is a phenomenon seen in English too. The rule of absurdity states that our brain leans towards the most normal, logical, and reasonable interpretation of something when it has multiple interpretations. An example in English is "I saw a man on the hill with a telescope". Your two immediate interpretations are either that I used a telescope to see a man on a hill- or that I saw a man on a hill with my naked eyes and that the man had a telescope. What you've automatically excluded is the possibility that I 🪚 a man on a hill using a 🔭-- because this is absurd. Further, the rule of absurdity states that if the speaker DOES want to say something absurd- it falls incumbent on the speaker to make that clear. This info will go in a future video, but so far not many people have raised this question (which is very weird because I intentionally left this hole here for people to ask about it). Thank you for asking and good job on identifying this! Hope this answers your question!
@@Icy1258 It's not really a contextual thing - the reason is not contextual, it's simply that the helper adjective たい changes how the verb is to be understood. Cure Dolly used the word "inducing", for lack of a better term (it's hard to use English to explain a concept which doesn't really exist in English).
I started learning japanese this week and memorised most of the hiragana and katakana now. My problem I just noticed on the thumbnail that は is wa but the website I learned it from told that its ha and わ is wa
@@liam3284 the は in こんにちは is no longer acting as a particle. This is because こんにちは is a fossil from old Japanese, meaning it doesn't play by modern day Japanese rules. こんにちは should be seen as a single entity instead.
@@liam3284 「こにちは」is not written in 漢字 because what you wrote is not 「こにちは」it is 「今日」which is not a greeting, but rather the word for "today" / "this day". When you wrote 「今日は」you are just saying that the topic of discussion is today.
Great video! I watched Cure Dolly's videos on this, but your way of looking at it seemed to hit home for me a bit more. Question: isn't "たい" an auxiliary adjective? Meaning, it could be translated as "the action is desired/ wanted/ desirable" just like 猫が好きだ is "Cats are likeable." So, クレープが食べたい could be read as "Crepes are desirable to eat." Whereas, クレープを食べたい could be read as "[It's] desirable to eat crepes." (?), and クレープは食べたい "Crepes, [they're] desirable to eat." And the nuances could be read as: (が) Crepes are good, I want to eat one; (を) I'd like to eat a crepe. (は) I want to eat, I'll have crepes / I'd like to try crepes. If there's a better way to look at it, please share. Thanks!
Thank you very much! Glad you enjoyed the video, and good question. Yes, たい is an aux adj, but few people can define the word "auxiliary", hence the decision to use the word "helper" instead. Don't get so hung up on translating it to English as ultimately there's no perfect way to translate the idea of たい; you're free to interpret it in whatever way works for you as long as it is consistent and gets the meaning across. That said I do like your interpretations quite a lot and think they fit quite well! Good job! 👍
While listening, I had this image about WA, imagine a piece of paper for essay and at the top is the topic. The body of the essay is contributed by both party, so whenever someone uses WA, the topic at the top of the essay changes and the body of the essay start again and continues until someone uses WA again to change the topic. Do you think this is the correct image to have?
The December batch eh? Good luck with that. Try breaking down other sentences that you're already familiar with by identifying what they REALLY mean (reveal the Øが). . The only reason this is confusing is because you were likely taught some heavily flawed system of Japanese grammar in the past. . If you ever found yourself questioning は vs が, you're a victim of Eihongo Grammar. People who have been taught the Øが from the beginning have never asked this question and don't even understand WHY it's a question. . I would suggest throwing everything you think you know out the window and starting from day 1 with this.
This guy is so bad at explaining things he broke my brain and I temporarily forgot who I was because that's how confused I was. How the f**k does "As for me IT is Japanese." make sense when you're talking about yourself? *uses 3 crepes example* And instead of elaborating on that he makes a sharp U Turn to an example about cats and elaborates on the crepes near the end 😭
Hi - my understanding was that ga was an Object marker, not a Subject marker. So in kureepu ga tabetai - crepes are the object, while the subject is not explicitly stated i.e. “I”. As in Japanese subjects are often not explicitly stated, but instead implied. Have I been misunderstanding until now?
OK, there is 2 things I don't get about it: 10:50 If は in the sentence makes so we are assuming the listener already knows about it, why is then defined generally as a particle that introduces a subject/topic to the conversation when the listener doesn't know about it? That's what makes me crazy with these japanese particle, it seems they simply didn't decide what function each particle would have, so they just mixed everything up and there's that. 12:50 If the actor is not necessarily the subject, then we need to redefine what subject means. Subject is the one who os characterized or the one who make the action of a verb. If that's not true to japanese, then we need to redefine it and ideally not call it subject but something else.
Thanks for watching and leaving your questions here! . Let me try to help. You'll come to learn and agree that Japanese is actually a very easy and very logical language- much more so than English, but the biggest problem is that it is mistaught to beginners who are unable to separate right from wrong yet. . To respond to your first point about the は particle being "defined generally as a particle that inteoduces a subject", the answer is simple because it is generally defined wrong. There is no middle ground, no compromise to make the two make sense. You've been taught misinformation. That is the sole reason Japanese particles seem confusing to you and the sole reason they seem to have not made up their mind on what does what. Matter of fact, it is the sole reason は vs が even exists in the first place. This is why Japanese people and people who follow stricty Cure Dolly's system NEVER have to question は vs が. . To answer your second question, you're probably right on the English definition of a linguisitc "subject", however, we don't have to redefine anything at all. Remember that we are dealing with Japanese and the thing that is marked by が is the 主語(しゅご [lit. Main Speech]), so if you think the word "subject" is too confusing, simply stop using it and use 主語 instead. Whatever you've read about a linguistic subject does not neccesarily apply to 主語 because Japanese is not English. Do not treat Japanese as if it were English and stop playing by English grammar rules. Treat Japanese as Japanese. The function of the Japanese 主語 should be very easy to understand because it only ever marks the thing doing/being the ENGINE of a complete logical clause. Please watch the next video in the series if you are unfamiliar with sentence ending engines: th-cam.com/video/7fv1V-BB9NI/w-d-xo.html . Hope this was able to clear things up for you! If you have any more questions or want some stuff to be cleared up, please let me know! 😁
@JouzuJuls Interesting. Never heard it explained like this. Closest woukd be other teachers here on TH-cam telling us you can omit a lot of stuff. Doesn't help that I've seen many different terms for 'subject' and 'topic' and worse some who use those interchangeably (some being Japanese people themselves). I'll look through Cure Dolly's stuff again but I will say I found her explanations confusing and some a bit overcomplicated and I found better understanding elsewhere. One I saw a user asking for clarification and she replied in a way I could understand to that comment which made me wonder why she didn't lead with that. But then again everyone's different.
This video is great, but now I am confused about why は exists if you need が more? Why is が built into every sentence? Wouldn’t は be the one built into all sentences because it marks what is being talked about?
Thank you for the comment and question! To clarify, it's not that が has to be in every sentence, it's that the subject must be in every sentence. This is true of not just Japanese, but of every language in the world. It just so happens that in Japanese, the subject is always marked with が. Remember that は does not mark what you are talking about, it marks the topic. What "you are talking about" would be the subject, and that is marked が. Please refer to 5:00 where I used the example sentence 私は日本人だ. In this sentence, we are not talking about 私, we are talking about "it". The topic simply clarifies and fills in the gap of what "it" is. If you really wanted to say "I am Japanese" you would need to say 私が日本人だ as that keeps "I" as the subject.
Hello. Thank you for your video. I really appreciate your efforts in explaining things in a different way. But even I agree with some explanations (I really like the idea of "receptive sentence" instead of "passive instead", I could also add "active sentence" could be replaced by something like "emitting sentence"), there are some things I don't agree. Thus, I disagree when you say the が particle is the most fundamental thing in Japanese particles and sentences, or that there is an (even invisible) が particle in every sentence, and I think someone would still misunerstand the が particle by watching this video. In fact, that assumption of a so called "invisible が particle" contradicts with what you said around 10:14 about the fact that the は particle emphasises what follows and that the が emphasises what is before: I totally agree with that, but when you say there is an invisible が, it would be the sentence emphasises what is before and what is after AT THE SAME TIME, which is not possible. That means when a sentence has a は particle that is marking the subject of an action or state, there is no invisible が particle at all, because both particule are totally incompatible with one another. The most fundamental thing to understand is what follows: a sentence does not need anything else than a "core" to be grammatically "complete". A core can be: - a verb - an adjective (the so called "い adjectives") - an adjectival noun (the so called "な adjectives") or a nound, followed by an auxiliary. And if we add some elements marked (or not) by particles, so if we add specification, we change the sence of that sentence. Thus, the sentences 日本人です, 私は日本人です and 私が日本人です does not mean the same thing: - the first one means roughly "This is a Japanese person", with a context allowing us to understand to what "that" is referring ("that" can be "I", or "that person", or "my father", or whatever); - the second one uses what I call "pointer particle は" that is "highlighting" 私 ("I"), so that we emphasise on the information we give about "I", in other words 日本人です. Such a sentence is useful when, for example, someone asks to me and my friend from which country we come, so that I can answer 私は日本人です。この人は中国人です (As for I, it's Japanese. As for this person, this is Chinese."). - the third one lets us emphasising on "I" to whom an already known information is applying. Such a sentence can be used for example when someone is asking "Among you guys, who is the Japanese person?" and I answer "It is I who is Japanese".
So, the Japanese structure is not at all centered on the が particle, which is not more fundamental than other case particles likes に or と. But if we want to understand what the が particle really means, we have to go back in time, at the time of classical Japanese when the が particle was almost completely interchangeable with the の particle. Actually, both が and の particles in structures A が B or A の B have the same fundamental function: attributing to the element "B" the other element "A". "A" can be an object, someone, an action or a state. But after time passed, a separation was made between both particles and about on what kind of B it applies: - as for A の B, "B" is a thing (object, person...) - as for A が B, "B" is an action or a state. But even nowadays, there are still remnants of that age both particles were interchangeable: - in 我が structure, it has the same meaning as 私の in a formal language, e.g. 我が国 meaning "My country", or 鬼が島 (often spelled as 鬼ヶ島) meaning "The Oni's Island"; - in "attributive clauses that are not too long, we can use the の particle instead of the が particle. So, we can analyse a sentence like 日本人が父です as follows: 日本人 ("the Japanese") is being attributed to the fact of "being my father" (so, "It is the Japanese [here in this room] who is my father"). If I say 猫が好きです, the element 猫 is being attributed to the fact of being "likeable". If I say クレープが食べたい, the element クレープ is being attributed to the fact of "being in a state of giving wanting to eat". If I say 私が食べた, the element 私 is being attributed to the fact of "having eaten. We can interprete が particle is "marking the subject" in those example, as a possible consequence of the "attributive function". But if I replace now the が particle with the の particle and remove the core (verb or "noun + auxiliary"), it is not a "marking the subject" function anymore, but this is still an "attributive function" in attributive clauses. Thus: - 日本人の父 can be translated as "My Japanese father" or "My father, the Japanese", or "My father who is Japanese"; - 猫の好き means "the likeable cats"; - クレープの食べたい「人」 means "[the person being] in the state of wanting to eat crepes"; - 私の食べたクレープ can be translated as "The crepes I ate". The difference with the original sentences is that those new sentences are not "complete" anymore, so they need a new "core" to be complete. For example, 日本人の父に会いましょう which means "I will meet my Japanese father". In summary, there is no "invisible が particle", in the same way there is no "invisible の particle" when I say e.g. 猫です instead of 私の猫です (the second sentences emphasises more on the fact the cat is "mine", so it has not the same meaning than the first one). As for the rest of the video, just one more thing: A を 食べたい structure is not that uncommon, but I just wanted to say such a pattern was already used in classical Japanese in ancient times. But I agree with your analysis of both A を 食べたい and A が 食べたい structures.
Hi, thanks for your well thought out comment. Allow to elaborate on 10:14 and explain why this is not a contradiction. The "Emphasis" that は and が exudes is not real. It is a result of their function. For the same reason that when you say "As for X" in English, you put "emphasis" on X. It's not *Emphasis* like what I just did with the asterisks, or like if you said it with more stress- that's real emphasis when you're trying to put more weight on a certain word. The topic marker makes the thing a topic- and thus because we noted it as a topic, we are talking about it as opposed to anything else. パンは食べた implies that I ate bread, but not anything else. Do you see how "emphasis" is not real, but a result of the topic? This is the same for が and it's emphasis. When we say "I eat bread" in English, we are saying that "I" is the person eating the bread- 私がパンを食べた. In Japanese, this would be unnatural as the ego of the sentence is usually left unsaid- meaning パンを食べた is the natural way of saying it Japanese. In this case the subject is Ø. When we specifically say that 私 is the subject, that deviates from Ø and thus- puts emphasis on 私. It is not the case that blindly using は and が randomly assigns some "emphasis" onto words for no reason. Once we understand the reasoning behind "emphasis" and what it actually is, we can realize that 10:14 is not a contradiction. To explain it using your examples: 日本人だ is Øが 日本人だ Ø is a Japanese person. Where "Ø" is marked as the subject. Where does the emphasis go? It goes to Ø. Which means there is no emphasis here because it isn't mentioned. Emphasis is not a result of the particle, but the result of the function of the particle. 私は日本人だ is 私は Øが 日本人だ As for me, Ø is a Japanese person. Where does the emphasis go? Right, we specifically stated that "As for me", not that we stressed it at all, but just because we mentioned it as opposed to anything else- there is now "emphasis" on it. As with before, Ø is the subject- which isn't mentioned. Which means we didn't add any "emphasis" on it simply by not mentioning it. Grammatically, a subject MUST exist in every sentence in every language however. 私が日本人だ I am a Japanese person. As opposed to the normal way of saying it (日本人だ), we have made the conscious decision to clearly state that *I* am a Japanese person. Because if you didn't want to say this, you would not have needed to include 私 as your clearly defined subject, if you have no need to clearly define it- you have no "emphasis" on it. There is no contradiction here because "emphasis" isn't real.
Going back in time does not help solve modern Japanese structure as the use of が to mean の is a fossil of the past. I understand what you're saying with the "subject function is a consequence of the attributive function", but modern Japanese has already moved on from this. You do not need to understand what the ら is うちら、こちら、and いくら are doing in order to understand those 3 terms. You also don't need to understand こんにちは as the original 今日＋は as it has completely changed. If you claim there is no Øが, it now falls incumbent on you to explain what the subject of every sentence is as every sentence must have a subject in every language. If there is no subject, there is no language. To have a language is to make comments about certain things- to make comments about certain things is to have a subject to talk about. When we have a model that can describe Japanese with a clear, consistent, and unchanging subject- I believe this to be the most useful model of Japanese. As for the commonality of を食べたい or が食べたい, "uncommon" is a subjective word. Google the 2 terms with quotation marks and see how many results show up using each one. I understand you want to say it's "not exactly rare", but my point is that it's simply uncommon, and the numbers don't lie.
@@JouzuJuls Thank you for your comment. I'll answer point by point. I think talking about "real emphasis" makes the thing more confusing, because it implies the learner have to pay attention to the difference between "real emphasis" and "unreal emphasis". In other words, I'm not convinced about the fact there would be no contradiction in what you explained about that. "パンは食べた implies that I ate bread, but not anything else." I disagree. In my opinion, it does not imply "I ate bread but not anything else", but rather "What I made particularly with that bread is eating it". Thus, supposing I'm right in what I'm stating, the emphasis would be after and not before. Let me change a little that situation. This time, someone is asking me what I ate the last time. Since it was some time ago, I a have to think about it because I am trying to remember. So, I could answer: あの、パンは食べた。えっと、チーズも食べた。でも、デサートは食べなかった。In this situation, you can see the first sentence does not imply I did not eat anything else than that bread, because after, we remember another thing we ate that time, using the も particle to add something else I ate. "When we say "I eat bread" in English, we are saying that "I" is the person eating the bread- 私がパンを食べた. In Japanese, this would be unnatural as the ego of the sentence is usually left unsaid- meaning パンを食べた is the natural way of saying it Japanese. " Agreed. "Where does the emphasis go? It goes to Ø. Which means there is no emphasis here because it isn't mentioned. " Agreed. But just after: "Emphasis is not a result of the particle, but the result of the function of the particle. " Does that not mean the same thing? I'm afraid I didn't really understand. "私は日本人だ is 私は Øが 日本人だ As for me, Ø is a Japanese person. Where does the emphasis go? Right, we specifically stated that "As for me", not that we stressed it at all, but just because we mentioned it as opposed to anything else- there is now "emphasis" on it." I disagree for the same reason as your example with bread: in my opinion, this sentence means "One thing I am is a Japanese person". So I think the emphasis is on "being a Japanese person", not on "I". "私が日本人だ I am a Japanese person. As opposed to the normal way of saying it (日本人だ), we have made the conscious decision to clearly state that I am a Japanese person. Because if you didn't want to say this, you would not have needed to include 私 as your clearly defined subject, if you have no need to clearly define it- you have no "emphasis" on it." Agreed (if I understood well what you said), so I interpret the emphasis to be on "I".
@@JouzuJuls "Grammatically, a subject MUST exist in every sentence in every language however." I totally agree with that, but I do not with your interpretation using this concept of "zero particle", which I considerer being a cheap attempt to find an English grammar logic in a quite different language. My interpretation is as follows: the subject of a Japanese is always inside its core (or "predicate", that means a verb, adjective, or "noun + auxiliary"), and it is always "it" that is the subject of every Japanese sentence. It is a little like Latin. For example, there is this famous sentence from Julius Caesar saying "Veni, vidi, vici", which means "I came, I saw, I conquered". Where is the subject here? it is included inside the conjugated form of the verbs implying "I". There is no "zero whatever" in that sentence. And speaking about Latin, the concept of particles in Japanese reminds me a lot the concept of Latin declension. This is the same thing in Japanese, but in a much easier way because there is no conjugated form depending on the subject, which implies the subject is one and only one thing, the most "neutral" way of specifying a subject: "it" (or "this", "that", "what"). And a Japanese sentence does not need anything else than a core to be complete, without no need to imagine such a complicated concept as "invisible zero particle". This is the most fundamental concept to understand in Japanese. We add things in a sentence in order to add specification, emphasis, personal touch, etc. For example, we add a nound marked by a が particle in order to do nothing else but identifying what "it" represents. So, let's analyse again those sentences: パンは食べた : "A thing it did to the bread is eating it" 私がパンを食べた : "What ate bread is I" パンを食べた : "It ate bread" 私は日本人だ : "A thing I am is a Japanese person"
It's a different function. There IS a way to explain に as the target particle doing what it's normally doing, but it's harder to explain and understand. I'll make a dedicated video for it eventually, but for now- for receptive sentences, you can just treat the に as having the ability to mark the actor of the sub-action ✌️
You can translate it whatever way you want. As long as you understand what it's actually doing. I translate は as "Speaking of ..." because that's what a topic is. "Says" is a bit strange when you have something like 「あの部屋には」, if you used "says" it'd be like "The 'in' of that room says". As opposed to "Speaking of the 'in' of that room", which kinda flows a bit better imo. But again, the translation doesn't really matter, what matters is understanding the underlying principle.
Having watched a lot of cure dolly’s series and having immersed a lot now, I finally understand what you mean now. Thanks for having introduiced me to this concept
Great insight, thank you !! I am close to the N2 level, but I never thought of it that way (and no teacher ever told me so !) Also thank you for explaining in the comments the two possible meanings of「食べたい」、because this seemed unclear to me in the video. By the way, do you also have this kind of insight for particules に and で ? Despite from what the textbook told me, and the instinct I developped with experience, it still seems pretty random to me... but maybe you have an insight that would make it make more sense ? 😊
First of all, good job on the video, howveer, I have question. So.... given the rules you established in this video, I understand クレープは食べたい to mean "As for the crepe, I am wanting to eat it" and クレープを食べたい as "want to eat the crepe." However, I now no longer understand クレープが食べたい, I used to understand it as "I want to eat the crepe," but now I don't know, becuase according to your rules, the crepe, being the subject, wants to eat. Of course, however, that's not what it actually means, in reality, it means "i want to eat the crepe," at least according to online translators. I guess what I am trying to say is, how is it that 私が食べたい means "I want to eat," but クレープが食べたい means "The crepe is making me want to eat it" or more simply "I want to eat the crepe" and not "The crepe wants to eat" ? あらかじめにありがとう
I really love this question because it shows who's paying attention and who's not. Your comment proves that you are indeed paying attention and this is a very real and very valid question. Please allow me to use my copy pasted answer from other people who have asked the same thing: You know how in math, √2 is ±2, but most people write "2" and forget about "-2" ? This is very similar. 私が食べたい actually simultaneously means both "I am eat want" and "I am eat wanting"; and similarly, クレープが食べたい simultaneously means "crepe is eat want" and "crepe is eat wanting". How do Japanese people make the choice to know which is which? It's something called "the rule of absurdity", which is a phenomenon seen in English too. The rule of absurdity states that our brain leans towards the most normal, logical, and reasonable interpretation of something when it has multiple interpretations. An example in English is "I saw a man on the hill with a telescope". Your two immediate interpretations are either that I used a telescope to see a man on a hill- or that I saw a man on a hill with my naked eyes and that the man had a telescope. What you've automatically excluded is the possibility that I 🪚 a man on a hill using a 🔭-- because this is absurd. Further, the rule of absurdity states that if the speaker DOES want to say something absurd- it falls incumbent on the speaker to make that clear. Hope this clears things up!
@@JouzuJuls I also want to thank you for the video, and ask a question ;) I picked up from somewhere that the 〜たい form renders a verb into an adjective, and so far in my Japanese learning this has been a helpful and seemingly correct idea. Now, to make syntactical sense of’クレープを食べたい’, I imagined the zeroが to be 私が, and ‘クレープをたべたい’ to collectively form an adjective (‘crepe-wanting-to-eat) that applies to the invisible subject 私が. (I am crepe-wanting-to-eat). Does this make sense? I thought I’d post this question here as it seems to be relevant to the question above. Thanks again!
@@glenn7484 Thank you very much, glad you enjoyed the video! You have the right idea, but the difference is that たい does not render the verb as anything. たい is たい and the verb is a verb, it doesn't matter what you attach to the verb- it stays a verb. What changes is the "engine" of the sentence as it will now be たい (adjective). So you go from a "A does B" verb ending sentence to a "A is B" adj ending sentence, but the verb is still a verb. ^^
Idk if I like “as for [topic]” as a substitute forは. “As for [topic]” seems to imply a context where other things were being discussed. I think of it more as “regarding [topic]”
Wouldn’t this be an exception? The way to ask someone if they can speak Chinese is “中国語が話せますか” where the word denoting the Chinese language is marked with が。 This would seem to make Chinese the subject. If 中国語 is the subject, that would mean I’m asking if the Chinese language itself “can speak”.
If you look [話せる] up in an actual Japanese dictionary (like a dictionary *from* Japan, for Japanese people), one of the definitions is [話し相手とするに足りる] (roughly, "to be sufficient enough to converse with someone") In Japanese you would interpret that sentence as "Will Chinese *suffice for conversation*? which makes "Chinese" the subject, doing the action of being sufficent for talking. *Lots* of Japanese verbs have less ego-centric definitions in Japanese dictionaries. Like [分かる] isn't just "to understand", it's "to become clear or understandable".
@@HowManyRobot Thanks for the reply. Also, in the creator’s conjugation cheat sheet video, he explains that the potential form (え-stem plus る) performs a kind of double duty and can represent both the ideas of “can do X” and “is X-able.” With this, the sentence could be analyzed as “Is Chinese speakable,” with Chinese being the grammatical subject. In fact, the exact word 話せる is used as an example in 8:09 of that video, showing both “can speak” and “is speakable” as semantic options.
Is wa needed then? If i say i want THIS, i use ga to emphasize this. If i use wa, it'll be like as for this, i want it. I guess? But still tho, its the same thing, right? Im still talking about THIS whether i make it the topic or the subject? Please explain.
If 私はクレープが食べたい and 私がクレープは食べたい basically mean I want to eat crepe in one way or another. How would I say the crepe wants to eat me? Would this be a case where using を makes sense and could be accepted? So would it be クレープが私を食べたい then?
Bingo. On that note, this following question also shows up : If 私が食べたい means "I am eat want", why doesn't クレープが食べたい mean "the crepe is eat want"? And if you had this question then good job, as that's a very valid question that proves you understand what's going on. Allow me to explain this too. You know how in math, √2 is ±2, but most people write "2" and forget about "-2" ? This is very similar. 私が食べたい actually simultaneously means both "I am eat want" and "I am eat wanting"; and similarly, クレープが食べたい simultaneously means "crepe is eat want" and "crepe is eat wanting". How do Japanese people make the choice to know which is which? It's something called "the rule of absurdity", which is a phenomenon seen in English too. The rule of absurdity states that our brain leans towards the most normal, logical, and reasonable interpretation of something when it has multiple interpretations. An example in English is "I saw a man on the hill with a telescope". Your two immediate interpretations are either that I used a telescope to see a man on a hill- or that I saw a man on a hill with my naked eyes and that the man had a telescope. What you've automatically excluded is the possibility that I 🪚 a man on a hill using a 🔭-- because this is absurd. Further, the rule of absurdity states that if the speaker DOES want to say something absurd- it falls incumbent on the speaker to make that clear. So in your situation of the crepe wanting to eat you- yes, specifying 私を is extremely important. It may even be beneficial to specify that the crepe is sentient too, just to remove all doubts!
Is the particle が marking a subject in contrast sentences? If so it doesn't make sense to me. For example わたしはいぬはすきですがねこはすきじゃない。Or is it a different が in this case, like it's a different は marking contrast rather than topic?
@@JouzuJuls Thanks for the clarification. It's something that isn't really explained by many people so it's easy to get confused when people make blanket statements about function.
If you say that は marks only the topic, then what's the difference between the topic and the subject? This still confused me even after watching the video several times.
は marks the topic of the sentence. The topic of a sentence tells us what the sentence is about. The は places emphasis on what comes after the 私. Therefore it essentially gives us the context or background for what follows the 私. For eg. 私はりんごが好き, here 私は is letting us know that the sentence is about me and what I find likeable and that’s why the video uses the translation “As for me…” However が marks the subject. The subject being who/what is performing the action in the sentence. So it’s an identifier and it puts emphasis on what comes before が. Using the same example 私はりんごが好き, if you think of すき as meaning “to be likeable or to be pleasing” then you will understand the sentence as “the apple is likeable or pleasing (to me)” Another example 明日は雨がふります(As for tomorrow, it will rain). This sentence let’s us know that we are talking about tomorrow (明日) which is the topic marked by は, but the main action being performed is ふります (falling) which will be performed by the rain (雨) marked by subject が This is the fundamental meaning of these two particles I tried to explain it based on how I understood it so…. I Hope this helps 😅
Because “inu” in your case is subject(actor) and “nomareta” is the receptive form + past tense of “nomu”, it can be understood as the dog receives the action of “drank”, which means “the dog was drunk by ….” in English sense. However, “mizu” here is marked by “o” as an object which actions act on and works similarly as receptive form, so I think this sentence doesn’t make sense. You can change this sentence to “inu ga(subject, known as actor as well) mizu o(object, marked by wo/o) nonda(past tense of nomu)”, meaning that the dog does the action "drank" directly(original, non-receptive form) and the water is what the action "drank" acts on, so the sentance can be simply translated into “The dog drank the water.”
Hindi is similar and I am realising it after seeing native English speakers struggle with this way of subject in the language. Japanese sentence structure is pretty natural for me, because I am a native hindi speaker
Finally someone is picking up on where Curedolly left off. RIP Dolly. I remember discovering her stuff early in my journey and it really helped. Unfortunately, even many japanese people will frequently say stuff like "And here we have WA, that marks the subject." If only the topic and the subject werent so often referring to the same thing but they often are and that causes that confusion. Btw. try to slow down the talking speed just a tad bit. We dont mind a longer video 😂
Yes, unfortunately even native Japanese teachers (_some_ of them - not all) will try to shoehorn Japanese into the Euro/English-focused grammatical model, and come up with confusing things like the word with は being the subject, and that が sometimes is the subject and sometimes is the object (the latter is typically explained with "if it's about a *feeling* then が is used to mark objects instead of を". Which is completely incorrect, as explained in this video. Of course native Japanese speakers will never get confused by は／が／を and are therefore unable to see the issue here. As for Japanese language structure in general I like Kaname Naito's channel. Here he explains the basic concept of "choose a topic, then comment on it" (paraphrased): th-cam.com/video/U2q5GsB0swQ/w-d-xo.html
if 「クレープが食べたい」means "the crepe is making me want to eat it, then should not 「クレープは ((私)が) 食べたい」mean something like "as for the crepé i am making it want to eat me"/"as for the crepé I am eat want make" ?? If not then how would i say that "I am making the crepé want to eat me"? ( I wrote 私 instead of zero in the parenthesis since that is what is most of the time implied) Understanding this would make the video a lot more comprehensible to me, but great video anyways thanks.
Yes, technically- however Japanese doesn't like to say exactly how someone else feels because you are not that person- and you cannot be 100% sure of how they feel. So if you were to say that cats are likable for someone else, you could say "(someone else)は猫が好きだそうだ。 The そうだ is like "seems like" or "I've heard". So instead of saying "cats are likable for this person" as a fact, you'll say "it seems like cats are likable for this person" Without the そうだ it's still grammatically correct and would convey exactly what you mean- but it's not as natural.
During the video i notice that it hasen't any new concepts that i didn't knew, i learned all of this in portuguese classes (my native language). I just never tried to apply it, now just seems too easy that i look dumb. Lol
Yesss, precisely that! The whole concept is NOT unique to Japanese, languages like Spanish have it too! Stuff like "me gusta el tequila" does NOT mean "I like tequila", it instead means "Tequila pleases me". All the confusion only comes up because English REALLY wants to put "I" as the subject of the sentence even when "I" is NOT the subject!
@@JouzuJuls the way that english subjects works still confuses me even that i use english as much as my native language. Feels natural but when i stop to think things like "it" and that it's so common to overuse subjects in english.
So basically from what I understood here, "犬は食べたい" doesn't necessarily mean I want to eat dogs, but could mean the dog wants to eat something, and it depends on the context. "犬が食べたい" 's more accurate translation would be, "The dog is want to eat."; And, "犬を食べたい" is the one that fits the accepted translation of "I want to eat dogs."
Thanks for the great video! My question is: can we say 「私が日本人です」? What I've heard mostly is 「私は日本人です」, which translates into "As for me, it is Japanese." Does the former mean "I am Japanese?"
It depends on the context. If you are talking to someone without anyone else around you two, and that this person is asking you "What is your nationality?", you can just answer 日本人です。Indeed, the context is 100% clear about the fact you are talking about yourself. Using 私は would be unnatural in that context, unless for some reason you really want to emphasise the information on yourself about the fact you are Japanese. If someone is asking two persons what is their nationality, you can answer この人は中国人です。私は日本人です。In that case, the は particle has a "contrastive function" (more than just a "topic marker function"), because you and the person next to you have different nationalities, so at first, you "point on" the person next to two to emphasise the information you give about that person; then you point on yourself to emphasise the information you give about yourself. If there are many people inside a room and someone aks "Among you, who is the Japanese person?", you can answer 私が日本人です。This time, the already known information "being Japanese" is attributed to yourself (that is, in my opinion, the true meaning of the が particle: attribute some action or state to someone or something), so that the emphasised information is not the fact of being Japanese, but the fact it is YOU who are the Japanese person. So, this sentence roughly means "It is I who is the Japanese person."
@@Rudolphhhhhh Your answer is 100% correct and perfect. (Even in your comment thread with the video owner below) The video owner is just thinking of Japanese with an English brain and making things more complicated. He doesn't understand the difference of は and が, the explanation for たい doesn't make sense because he doesn't understand Japanese at the core level.
Every single Japanese sentence is composed of 2 essential parts that cannot change. The A car (subject marked が) and the B engine (sentence ender, check the next video in this series). The A car MUST come before the B engine. . For example: 1) 猫がいる。 The A car here is 猫が, therefore we can already see the が. The CAT is the subject. いる is the verb sentence ender (B engine). This sentence is "A does B", "The cat does the act of existing". 2) 猫だ。 As you can see, there is no visible が. 猫だ is simply the noun sentence ender (B Engine). The sentence right now translates to "is cat", but WHAT is cat? The answer is simple- "IT" is cat, because "IT" can only be understood via context. To represent "IT" in Japanese, we use Øが. Øが猫だ。Would be showing what's ACTUALLY happening. Øが is the A car, the subject is Ø, in other words- "IT". The full sentence becomes "IT is cat".
おれがボールを投げた for 6:09 right? Know the subject is hidden is one thing, and it helps understand how duolingo translations are interpretations and not literal, but know that there's a ga hidden... Duolingo works but gotta be careful to not take things literal there. All this courses focus on showing an english friendly waty to write the sentence instead of something that would sound weird.
subject is the thing that is doing the verb in the sentence (ie it's a purely grammatical distinction) whereas the topic is just what you're talking about basically
❗New video on the て-form just came out, click here to watch now! th-cam.com/video/HAdmKhVjVs8/w-d-xo.html ❗
This is the MOST FUNDAMENTAL video that you need to understand as it is the basis to EVERYTHING moving forward in Japanese structure. Feel free to ask questions if you don't understand anything as I can't stress how every video moving forward will probably end up pointing back here-- that's just how important this is!
IM SORRY BUT do you have a 2nd channel?? How do you have the gold playbutton? I was wondering why your videos were such good quality..
So it's wrong to to think about wa and ga as ga making the subject as the thing to the right of the sentence, and wa to the left?
Amazing job explaining this, it blows my mind how just one person can clarify months of lazy studying on my own part and not clearly taught textbook Japanese. Huge thanks, glad I subbed to this channel!
I'm glad I was able to clarify the が particle to you, and thanks for watching! If you have anything else you're confused about please feel free to bring it up on our Discord so we can all talk about it and maybe find a solution together! 😄
Finally the real Japanese's structure is starting to be taught aside from the Cure Dolly sensei course let's go
I'm only helping to spread the message. Until schools and textbooks actually start to adopt this approach, it's still (for some reason) a secret sauce.
@@JouzuJuls Yeah it's pretty tragic because the way they teach Japanese structure is really flawed I hope some day the real model become the standard
@@Suzukixd89 I don't think "real" is the right word. It's just that her model is the best fit for English speakers. The reason it's hard to say it's "real" is because this model would not be needed for native Japanese people. So technically the "real" model is to do exactly what Natives do and go without a guide- let your brain figure it out itself.
@@JouzuJuls what you just said really got me thinking lmao but anyway this model still working best than the model Eihongo textbooks teach
@@Suzukixd89 Precisely that. Doesn't matter that it isn't the "real" approach. It's the method that works best for English speakers (or any other language where the subject must be visible).
I had to rewatch this video multiple times as I'm new to Japanese grammar. I couldn't fully grasp everything you were saying until I explored cure dolly sensei's videos, saw many example sentences, and tried to remember what the particles were doing with each sentence. Yes this does mean I had to fully grasp most of the particles in order to understand this video.
This video is super important so if you were to do a series on this, try to gear it toward beginners. Beginning with short easy to understand sentences and then with longer more complex sentences. I would also refrain from assuming we understand anything such as 辛いもの, I personally did not understand that mono turned this into things which made it hard to grasp the sentence (7:05). It's obvious to me now but before almost every word in the video was new to me so I couldn't focus on the particle itself.
Maybe this video wasn't meant to teach at all levels and had a different goal but when you said updated model of cure dolly sensei, my first thought was to learn from you, student to student. Thanks Juls you're one of the best at showing us how to study, you just need a different approach when it comes to teaching Japanese itself.
Just saw the comment, sorry for the late reply.
First of all thank you for watching the video and leave such thoughtful feedback!
Yea I think I'll do more videos talking about this exact same topic but framed differently. This video was aimed more towards people who already knew SOME Japanese grammar hence the format of "This sentence does NOT mean this, it instead means THIS".
Your feedback is very valuable and I totally understand what you mean! Hopefully I'll nail a way to present this to beginners in the future!
I cannot agree more. This comment is spot on! Thanks @swiftburn
Thanks for the videos! I'm still near the start of my journey, but I can already tell your grammar series and overall learning method will be very helpful!
Thank you very much and I'm glad my videos are helpful for you! Don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or want help by joining the Discord server!
This made SO much sense! Ive been struggling with the logic behind the particles for years and only thing my teachers/professors say is "just read a lot and it will come naturally" Thank you so much for this!
You are the first person I literally see explaining what this kind of sentences LITERALLY means. I'm a Japanese Language teacher in my country, and I also explain this to my students. However, being a native Spanish speaker is an advantage not only for me but also for my students because our language, despite being quite different from Japanese, actually has some aspects quite similar.
(私（に）は) 猫が好きだ is translated in Spanish as "(A mí) me gustan los gatos." or depending on context "(A mí) me gusta el gato." While "gustar" is still a verb like "to like" and not and な adjective like "好き", in Spanish the subject here is... ¡"los gatos"! or "el gato". "Gustar" is what we call in Spanish an "affective verb", a verb in which the subject make the indirect object to feel something. The "(A mí) me" is the indirect object in the sentence, meaning "to me". Interestingly enough, although we don't have a theme particle like "は" (we can indicate something as the theme of the sentence in a similar way as in English), it makes complete sense in Japanese because you can say 私 *に* は猫が好きだ. That 私に means exactly "A mí", like in Spanish!
I also have explained the difference between が and を when using たい, but your explanation and other from a grammar dictionary I have make sense with the one I found first years ago and it's the one I use: りんごが食べたい makes emphasis that is the apple the thing you want to eat (your explanation), the desire to eat one is strong (dictionary's explanation), and you don't have an apple in front of you (the explanation I found and I use). Meanwhile りんごを食べたい does not make that emphasis, since the subject is probably 私が (your explanation), the desire of eating an apple is not so strong (dictionary's explanation) and I have THIS apple in front of mine, so I want to eat THIS one given that's at my reach (the explanation I found and I use). Thinking about it, neither explanation contradict one another :o
Great video!
Yo también he notado eso. Pese a ser idiomas tan diferentes, el español y el japonés encuentran senderos muy similares para llegar al mismo destino.
Me gusta tu ejemplo. Es más, se me ocurre una buena comparación.
Si yo digo "りんごが食べたい", es más bien como decir "me apetece una manzana". Como podemos ver, en ambos casos es el sujeto la manzana. "Quiero comer una manzana" sí sería más bien "りんごを食べたい".
@@AristizabalixGrimm ¡Está bueno ese ejemplo!
This is so helpfull! I alreasy grasped the を particle, but couldn't know when to use は or が. the ０が is very nice, thank you.
I think the key in order to understand this is to realise that Japanese has fundamentally different views of the world. For Westerners, the person is the most important thing in the world, more so than crepes, trees or cars. Therefore we are the center of all action. But in Japanese this is not the case. Eating is not something "I" do, rather, it is something that happens between the crepe and I. It sounds weird and ridiculous, but that´s exactly why these particles are hard to tell apart.
Amazing explanation.
Yes! That's exactly what it is. Once we can grasp that the whole world view is different, it truly does change our comprehension of the language and affects what we're saying.
Yeah, I’ve been learning off and on for about a year and a half now and what seems to be emerging for me is that Japanese seems to be more often intent on directly communicating experience, rather than to ‘describe reality’ in some way. Does that make sense? Even with 思う, I’m picking up on a sense of mental images being experienced in the mind, rather than ‘me’ (as an agent more than a witness) doing this thing called thinking. It’s still pretty vague to me though, and I’m curious to find out whether a clearer understanding of the way life is conceptualised in Japanese language will unfold for me.
I asked a native Japanese guy and he said that クレープをたべたい is completely fine lol.
thank you for the video kiryu-san :)
This made everything so much clearer. Thank you so much.
this is incredibly helpful, recently started learning and these particles have been kicking my ass a little
This is so amazing, i literally haven’t been able to understand wa and ga for like 5 months and you just explained it to me in 13 mins lol
Thank you for this huge help. 🙏🏼
You're very welcome! Glad this video was helpful! 😁
This changed my view of the language and helped clear out some confusion.
Thank you!
This is mind blowing, I'll have to rewatch this a few times, to understand.
This video alone unlocked reading Japanese for my brain 🤯 Before I struggled understanding the role and meaning of the different particles, as sentences always were translated to the correct English meaning, while it is so much easier to understand when translating each part of the sentences separately and then combining it all into the full meaning afterwards. Thanks for your videos, they're really helpful 🙏
Thank you for this, very helpful channel.
I love this! Amazing job🎉
Wow, this is the first time i've seen that concept, where did you first read about it?
Once heard about the "invisible は" but honestly this is kind of a game changer, thanks for the vid
Cure Dolly sensei is the one who taught me this concept, I believe she learned it from a Dr. Jay Rubin.
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Most of the information about the Ø Pronoun in Japanese is hidden behind Academic and Phd papers. Not sure why they don't teach this most commonly! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The visible ha is nothing new - it is usually taught as: what is not necessary to understand the sentence will be left out. And often the topic of a sentence is clear from the context, hence there is no ha needed.
I understood the "God particle" instead of "ga particle" at the start of the video.😅 I thought it was a bit sarcasm, as it is not far from the truth in Japanese language... Thank you for the videos - extremely helpful!
Thank you for giving the credit to Cure Dolly sensei. I missed her...😢
Also, the part where you mention the food doesn't need to be sentient in order to make me want to eat it, that's correct. But remember that Japan has Shintoism culture where all things have souls. So to Japanese (at least ancient people who created the language), the food is actively doing something doesn't sounds weird to them. We see this more clearly in ukemi (受身) form on the last part of your video. 水が犬に飲まれた can be translated as "The water receive drink action on the dog". This will be consistent with water still be the subject and it receive, that's why it's called 受身, literally means "receive form"
Thank you for keeping Cure Dolly's legacy alive and building on the foundations she set. All the best with your channel from a new subscriber. 🙂
This was super informative. You're videos are very well put together!
I have watched several videos regarding the difference between が & は, including those taught by Japanese people. This one gives the simplest and clearest explanation, and it makes perfect sense logically. どうもありがとうございました！😊
it is wrong, do not listen
I LOVE THIS, It's about world view. This is training our mind to stop making ourselves the subject when thinking in Japanese. I LOVE THISSS
great video please be consistent btw love ur channel
Thanks for watching and commenting! It's very difficult to be consistent when I run 2 channels and have 3 jobs, so I'll try my best to at least get this 3 part series out consistently. Maybe 1 a week! :)
I had a thought during your crepe example. Do you think the sentence structure of "the crepe making me want to eat it" within the language might be one of the reasons why Japanese culture often has a lot of anthropomorphism and cuteness to it? I could definitely imagine a crepe or other objects being life-like with that form of wording as opposed to the English version of "I want to eat [the thing]."
@@samatcha-tv Yes, I absolutely believe it does! It really shows how the languages we speak can change our world views entirely.
The Pimsleur Japanese course often hints at this. Usually when the は particle is used they'll translate it as "as for X..."
@8:14 I guess is tempting me would be close to english, not quite niche enough for food specifics but Serves the same function.
I think you misrepresented what Dolly-sensei was saying in your examples.
First of all, Dolly does NOT use "subject" and "actor" interchangeably. If you listen carefully to her lessons, you find that she OCCASIONALLY refers to what が marks as the "actor", but that's only to help illustrate her point that が always marks the main do-er of a sentence, i.e. the subject.
Second, she never once referred to the dog as the "actor" in her lesson about the receptive れる/られる form and, in fact, said the exact opposite ―― that the dog *isn't* the actor since it's not the one doing the receiving. That would be the water.
The part where you showed Dolly referring to the dog as the "actor" is from a completely different lesson unrelated to this concept. That lesson was about the causative せる/させる form, where she clearly explains that those types of sentences always have at least two actors (one for せる/させる and one for the verb it attaches to). This is completely consistent with her が lessons, because she never once said or implied that the が-marked subject/actor is the ONLY actor that can ever be in a sentence. Yes, が always marks the subject, and the subject is always an actor; but an actor isn't always the subject, so actors don't always get marked by が.
She gave the example sentence "Øが 犬に 肉を 食べさせた", where "Ø" (the one who compelled the dog to eat) is the main actor and the subject, thus getting が, while "dog" (the one who ate) is another actor, but is also functioning as a target, which gets it に instead of が. This makes "dog" an actor, but not the subject.
Nothing Dolly said about this was confusing or contradictory in any way.
First of all, thank you for posting this comment!
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To respond, could I summarize your comment as the following points?
1. Dolly does not use "subject" and "actor" interchangeably except when she does
2. Dolly does not refer to the dog as the "actor" in one lesson, but does in another
3. Our definition of what an "actor" is, is not aligned
4. She never said that the が-marked subject/actor is the ONLY actor
5. The "actor" marked に is the actor because it is also functioning as a "target"
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I will be responding to these 5 points so please let me know if I have misunderstood you in some way.
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1. This comment already is a confusing statement and is an example of what Dolly fights against, exceptions. My video is trying to point out that there is no need to ever call the "subject" an "actor" because it is already understood what a subject does. Calling it an "actor" adds unnecessary confusion (such as the situation of having "2 actors" which we will see later).
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2. This shows inconsistency. You can't say "she never once referred to the dog as the actor" when she DOES because she refers to the EXACT same sentence in 2 lessons. It doesn't matter that it wasn't "in her lesson about れる/られる", it's still the same sentence.
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I can't say "猫が好き" means "I like cats" in one lesson, then in another lesson, re-use 猫が好き and say that "the cat is the subject". These 2 statements contradict and are inconsistent.
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Secondly, YOU contradicted yourself in your own comment. In your 5th paragraph, YOU referred to the dog as the "second ACTOR". So if you say that Dolly has NEVER referred to the dog as an actor, either Dolly is wrong or you are.
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Furthermore, the reason you even needed to bring this up in the first place is a perfect example of why point no.1 needs to be clarified. Had she NEVER referred to the subject as the "actor" EVER (because doing so is unneeded), this point would not even be listed.
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3. I am unsure what your definition of the "actor" is as you've contradicted yourself in your comment. So allow me to define "actor" and let's see whether we're on the same page. An "actor" is anything that does something. Just because a lot of the time the actor HAPPENS to be the subject, doesn't mean there's any relationship that Actor = Subject or vice versa.
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By this definition, in the sentence Øが 犬に 肉を 食べさせた, you CAN INDEED say that there are "2 actors": The Ø and the 犬. This means that Dolly is indeed right about calling the 犬 an actor, and she has indeed done so.
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HOWEVER, this goes back to point no.1 again. WHY is there a need to call the が anything else BUT the subject? Why do we need to say that there are "2 actors" when we can very easily say "there is the subject marked が as it does 100% of the time, and there is the actor marked に".
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What advantage does calling the が an "actor" give? What's wrong with the word "subject"?
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4. I never said that either.
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5. You are correct. I plan to emphasize this point a bit more in a dedicated video about the に particle, but I found it unnecessary to include in this video. Worry not, I will not be like point no.1 and contradict myself in that video.
@@JouzuJuls Yes, you indeed misunderstood me. My actual points were as follows:
1. Dolly does not use "subject" and "actor" interchangeably *at all.* She calls the subject an actor in the same way that you can call a square a rectangle or a cat an animal. All A is B, but not all B is A. This is basic logic. I don't understand how you see the two as "interchangeable".
2. Dolly refers to the dog as the "actor" *in a completely different sentence in an unrelated lesson* which has nothing to do with what you explained in the video.
3. She never said that the が-marked subject/actor is the ONLY actor (again, just like how squares aren't the only rectangles)
4. The "actor" marked に (again, in a completely unrelated sentence and lesson) is marked as such because both a) it's also a target, and b) が is already marking the other (primary) actor of the sentence, the subject, like it always does. If either of those weren't true, then it wouldn't be marked with に.
- "You can't say 'she never once referred to the dog as the actor' when she DOES because she refers to the EXACT same sentence in 2 lessons."
Ok, now you're just being deliberately obtuse. We both know damn well that they were NOT the exact same sentence. One sentence was "水が犬に飲まれた" and the other was "犬に肉を食べさせた".
- "YOU contradicted yourself in your own comment. In your 5th paragraph, YOU referred to the dog as the 'second ACTOR'. So if you say that Dolly has NEVER referred to the dog as an actor, either Dolly is wrong or you are."
Again, you're being deliberately obtuse. Re-read my 3rd paragraph sentence. I clearly said she never referred to the dog as an actor IN HER OTHER LESSON, which again, was in a completely different sentence about a completely different topic.
- "The reason you even needed to bring this up in the first place is a perfect example of why point no.1 needs to be clarified"
Please explain what needs to be clarified here. Is it the concept that an "A" can be a "B" but not always the other way around? Because that's basic logic, my guy. Dolly even explain this point as well in her first lesson about だ.
- "I am unsure what your definition of the 'actor' is as you've contradicted yourself in your comment.
It's actually very simple. An "actor" is whatever is doing a verb. A subject is always doing a verb, so a subject is always an actor. But as we see in せる/させる sentences, sometimes there are multiple verbs, so there must also be multiple actors in those cases. "水が犬に飲まれた" has 1 verb, so there is 1 actor. "犬に肉を食べさせた" has 2 verbs, so there are 2 actors. WHERE IS THE CONTRADICTION HERE??
At this point, this seems less like misunderstanding and more like intellectual dishonesty. Dude, if you're so dead set on calling Dolly wrong that you have to deliberately misquote her, act like 2 different sentences/concepts are the same just to call her out on making 2 different comments about them, pretend like you don't understand basic logic, and then proceed to project YOUR apparent confusion of it onto other people, calling it "contradicting" or "confusing" or whatnot, just because YOU aren't making any sense of it, then why bother giving her props or including her in your videos in the first place? If anything, this just feels like a middle finger to all the hard work Dolly put into those videos to make it easier for us to understand this language.
@@jpnpod8277 I'm not sure why youre coming at me so hard and I'm sorry if I offended you in some way. As I said in the beginning of this video, I may have made some mistakes and I may make a video saying that the stuff in this video is wrong in the future. Unsure why you think I'm "dead set" on something when I'm asking you to clarify your point so I can better understand where you think I'm wrong.
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So from your reply here's what I can see:
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You say that the subject is always the actor. I agreed to this. I simply asked why this must be said? Why not leave it unsaid and just call the subject the subject?
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To put it into your anology, if there were 2 shapes on a table, a square and a rectangle. What paints a clearer picture:
"There are 2 rectangles on the table" or "There is a square and a rectangle on the table". Neither is wrong, one is just more clear. No reason we need to call a square a rectangle even if it is- the word square exists.
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You seem to not understand that れる/られる are also verbs just like せる/させる.
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If "犬に肉を食べさせた" has 2 verbs and therefore 2 actors, so does "水が犬に飲まれた". That's your contradiction.
@@JouzuJuls Ok, NOW I see what you mean with your contradiction claim and I wish you had worded it that way earlier. I actually did already know that れる/られる are verbs too, but I forgot to take that into consideration when I was forming my argument. I responded the way I did because I thought you were being intellectually disingenuous and ignoring details for the sake of your argument, like when you said the two sentences were exactly the same. They weren't, but now I see that the logic they both use are the same, which is probably what you actually meant. I apologize for that and I take back everything I said regarding it. If we take the same logic for both sentences, then yes, you are 100% correct that Dolly contradicted herself by calling the dog an "actor" in one case but not the other.
But as for you question about the terms "subject" and "actor", let me ask you something: In all situations, would you deny or ignore the fact that squares have 4 sides and 4 right-angles just because it's called a square? Are we suppose to just magically know what a square even is in the first place without ever being told?
We're not talking about two random things on a table getting labelled, we're talking about how we describe and represent concepts with words. Not only does calling the subject an actor help to illustrate what it actually does in a sentence, but it also makes it easier to say various things in certain contexts, like explaining grammar points. What's easier to say, "せる/させる sentences must have at least 2 actors" or "せる/させる sentences must have at least 1 actor and a subject"? One is redundant, takes more words just to get the same point across, and includes unnecessary information (the properties specific to a subject are not relevant here, only the fact that it's an actor).
By your logic, we should just drop the word "animal" from our vocabulary altogether simply because they each have their own specific name anyway, as that apparently "paints a clearer picture". Instead of Animal Planet, we should call it "Lion/tiger/bear/panther/gorilla/wolf/giraffe/etc...." Planet, with the names of every single one in the title. The same can be said for every other umbrella term there is, like "vehicle", "song", "genre", etc.
@@jpnpod8277 Thank you for correcting my choice of words, I should have been more specific, you are right.
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The rest of your argument seems to revolve around the assumption that without ever calling the Subject an "actor", the only other way we could possibly know what the subject does is "to just magically know".
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As if it is literally impossible to understand what a square is without ever being told it's a rectangle.
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So if someone were able to explain what a subject does without ever calling it an actor, would you consider that magic?
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Is this whole video magic...? Cuz if it is I might just advertise it as the "magic solution" 😂
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Btw you also said that having 2 seperate words here is "redundant" and that the "properties specific to a subject are not relevant here".
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So putting aside that this whole video is a video about subjects in Japanese...
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Let's remember that Dolly's system of breaking down Japanese requires you to identify the subject, and that the subject is in every sentence. And I don't just mean "this one particular sentence" which could be implied when you said the word "here", I mean a universally applicable breakdown of all Japanese sentences.
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So to better illustrate my point about why calling the subject an actor is redundant, let's give the words a few labels.
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Subject = A
Predicate = B
Actor = C
Sub-clause action = D
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And we establish 2 facts:
- The sentence we are working with is an A does B sentence with C does D as a sub clause
- A is C
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You are saying that having "A" is redundant and therefore we should say "C does D within C does B".
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Now in order to follow the system and break down this sentence, you must find A. But there are 2 C's, so which is A?
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But here's the gotcha part. That's not a hard question to answer because A is the one doing B. The point is that you had to ask the question of "what is A" in the first place.
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That's not a question you have to ask if you just wrote A does B. Redundancy!
Great explanation.
BTW the past participle of "drink" is "drunk", so "The water got drunk by the dog." is correct.
I was a bit out on this video for a bit, but the idea of the topic particle existing in order to divert agency away from the speaker to an outside force makes a lot of sense in the context of Japanese culture. That might be one of those light bulb moments for understanding the nuance of a language.
Wish I'd seen this when I started learning (3 years ago) lol - this all makes way more sense now
I've seen so many different explanation for が and は imma just speak with whatever comes to mind until i get a feeling for what's appropriate.
This mindset is unfortunately the result years of が and は being completely mistaught as this mysterious and hard to understand creature.
It is not.
が is very simple to understand and MUST be understood to develop a proper grasp of Japanese.
I would advise ditching literally everything you've been told about が and watching this video with a blank canvas.
The only reason people say "just go by intuition" is because they fail to explain what can very easily be explained without exception. Yet they still refuse to revise this way of teaching.
Not only does traditional Eihongo grammar fail to explain fundamental grammar points, it also reinforces DESTRUCTIVE ideas like this.
@@JouzuJuls well, I watched a video by another dude who said that は puts emphasis on what comes after it and が puts emphasis on what comes before it, the dude is tokini Andy I think.
I understand both explanations, but it is still kind of confusing, are they mutually acceptable or not, I am very confused rn. But I'll force my 2 brain cells to work and figure it out.
@@sweetdurt2143 Yes, I also said this at 10:14 (read the slides).
If Tokini Andy said only that and left it, then he only explained WHAT it does without going into detail about WHY it does it. To actually develop a solid understanding of Japanese, you must actually take a look at the structure instead of the surface level. Traditional textbooks (Like Genki that Tokini Andy uses) don't do this. They come up with some nonsense that confuses learners who don't know better and brush all their holes and mistakes off as "just develop intuition".
Japanese structure is the most flawless way of looking at Japanese grammar (and thus the most useful). The most fundamental concept clashes with traditional Eihongo textbooks as well as Tae Kim, as both of those have clear flaws that get exposed by Japanese Structure.
Tokini Andy seems to also have realized this and 7 months ago made a video quoting Dr.Jay Rubin and teaching the Øが as well.
This video by Cure Dolly explains why mixing the nonsense of Eihongo with Japanese Structure does not work by taking a detailed look at why Tae Kim is fundamentally flawed: th-cam.com/video/-JuHi-yKGFc/w-d-xo.html
@@JouzuJuls finally... A youtuber giving a perfect explanation, thank you
@JouzuJuls eihongo is kind of like our version of japanglish. English is taught so poorly in japanese school in a similar way, such as teaching English as if it is japanese. This is probably why most japanese people cannot speak any English to English speakers, but can only speak English to japanese English speakers despite English being a mandatory subject for japanese students.
Its time people realize different languages are... different. They need to be taught with their own context rather than related to the native language one is coming from.
Super helpful! Thanks!!
8:00 i learned the たい form as just someone wanting to do something, which i guess would be the simplified version of "making someone want something". however i don't quite understand it the way you defined the たい form, so i'd be glad if you could tell me where you learned it like that, so i cant look it up and understand the たい form further than what i know.
Yo! Sorry for the super delayed reply! TH-cam flagged this comment as spam so I didn't get to see it!
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I think the problem starts with you thinking たい is a "form", it is not a "form". たい is just a helper adjective.
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I can link you to the resource that my teacher made for you to look into it yourself! th-cam.com/video/vk3aKqMQwhM/w-d-xo.html
@@JouzuJuls thank you very much! i will look into it!
@@rina-ht4cc No worries! It might seem pretty complex at first but I promise that once you understand it, Japanese will make complete & total sense!
頑張って！😁
@@JouzuJuls oh yeah, it made perfect sense to me when the teacher explained it. it aligned perfectly with my own perception of the phenomenon too.
however my nice feeling of accomplishment was soon gone when i heard what happened to the teacher. I've never heard of her before but she seemed a very dedicated and lovely person, i feel very sorry.
well, that gives all the more reason to communicate my appreciation to the lovely people in our learning community that are still around.
thank you for being around helping people learn better and contributing to this community!
i wish you the very best, take care!
@@rina-ht4cc Glad her explaination was able to clear everything up!
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Yea, she was a VERY nice person and dedicated herself to helping people even at her last moments.
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I remember when I had questions about Japanese without knowing her situation and she would still be apologizing for slow replies and stuff. Keep in mind I was a complete nooby at that time too.
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If only we knew what she was going through back then...
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Oh well, at least I can try my best now to continue her legacy!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think a better way to think about は and が would be to think about them as "distance relative to the speaker/conversation" or "direct relevance to the speaker". は would serve as the "distant topic" or "background": (what you're indirectly talking about), while が would serve as the "object close to you" ie: (what you're directly talking about). This would explain why は serves to indicate a general topic but doesn't allow further comment about it. For example:
"The pages are so flimsy and the contents are not interesting. We are talking about a book, by the way." Where the "pages and contents" are が and the "book" is は as we are directly commenting on the pages and content and indirectly commenting on the book itself.
Another rule I read about the は particle is that it should *not* be used to introduce new elements into the conversation. It should be reserved to things that are already mentioned or are obviously present from the context.
Hey Juls, I understand that は is closest to "as for" which is in your slides but you also say it marks the topic. 5:28 is when you introduce "0 が" saying "it" becomes the subject. So I'm confused on how "watashi/me" is not a subject as well. From my understanding, your sentence is: 'as for Chad, he is Japanese'. Chad and he are both subjects I thought. But you are saying "Chad" is a topic and "he" is the subject.
I do not think you ever mentioned what the difference between a topic and subject is in the video. I'm a native english speaker and I would say most people use them interchangeably but you might have a different definition which I believe is why I'm not understanding the concepts.
If I'm wrong about anything correct me please c: and thanks for the video
Oh damn I JUST saw this comment! Sorry for the super late response!
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The simple answer is to not treat Japanese as English. Throw everything you know about English grammar away, throw your expectations about what "Subjects" and "Objects" are supposed to be in English- because English is not Japanese.
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I know this is a pretty "nothing" answer but the difference between the topic and subject is that the topic is marked by は and the subject is marked by が. I doesn't really matter what they are past this!
"It" isn't a perfect translation for the zero-ga. The point of it being a "zero" is that it can be literally anything, but in English, "it" can only be third person, inanimate, and singular
Thanks for that, really clears it up 👍
Thank you!
thanks for the video
You're very welcome! 😊
Sorry to comment so late, but I’ve always wondered. What’s the distinction between “spicy food is likable to him” vs “he likes spicy food”? I can maybe see it in some convoluted sense like, this person may thing something is likable, but he may not like it himself. If I’m wrong, do let me know. But to me, they both pretty much convey the same meaning to me. It’s like saying “ I went to the store today” vs “the store is the place that which I went today”. Once again, I could be wrong, but that’s how I view it.
Also I know you get this a lot, but I absolutely LOVE your channel. I’ve been practicing for years, still struggle, but you have made a bunch of stuff clearer for me and I’ve watch multiple of your videos at least 5 times. I can almost recite your conjugation video. I’m super impressed with your speaking skills and pronunciation. I wish I could sound that good, but I get too embarrassed when I speak. Anyway thanks and much love brother
Edit: also one more question. What’s the difference between the subject and topic? I mean, I get it in certain examples, but is it not subjective sometimes? I could be talking about how I got hit by a ball in gym class, and I assume I would be the subject here and ball is the topic. But what if I wanna make the focus on me rather than the ball, wouldn’t I perceive myself as the topic and the ball is just there, or can the sentence stay the same and the subject/topic change?
Hi there! Lemme try to help you out.
The difference between "he likes spicy things" and "spicy things are likable" is the subject of the sentence.
Yes, ultimately- meaning wise, both mean the same thing and you're just writing it differently. But this difference between what is "normally written" in English and Japanese highlights the different ways these languages view the world.
In the normal English "he likes spicy food", English likes to comment on the person who feels something about something else. "Spicy food is likeable" sounds weird because of the preference to out the "ego" as the subject in English.
Conversely, 辛いものが好き shows Japanese's preference to NOT show the "ego" and talk about the thing that is exerting the feeling of being likable. 彼が辛いものを好き is not grammatically wrong- but it's just weird because highlighting the Ego like this is just not what Japanese people do.
When you hear people saying that languages shape the way you see the world, this is what they mean!
Oh, your other question! "topic" is a concept foreign to native English speakers for sure.
To put it simply, the subject is whatever must exist in the sentence (visible or not) in order for the sentence to convey what you mean with additional context to support you.
For example, this sentence is often used to confused Japanese natives about their own grammar: 象は鼻が長い (as for the elephant, nose is long)
You can remove each element here to see whether the sentence stays intact- or flip the particles. For example, if you remove "as for the elephant", the sentence stays in tact as long as you have the context of talking about elephants.
However, if you remove "nose", you get left with "as for elephants, it is long". That doesn't make sense even with the context.
Or if you flip it to be like "as for noses, elephant is long", don't think I need to say it but that clearly isn't the same meaning.
Hence with this example, we can prove that が always marks the subject no matter what, and that the subject is omnipresent everywhere. While は helps clarify what we're talking about.
If the question is- I have a thing that can be either the subject or topic- how do I know which to mark it with.
Then it's a matter of getting enough comprehensible input to figure out what's the most natural on a case by case basis.
@@JouzuJuls ooh I see this actually makes a lot of sense, thank you so much.
I’ve heard this point before, and that’s why Japanese doesn’t use “I” so often while talking, because it’s perceived as arrogant or selfish. I never extended that idea past that and into the sentences though. That’s really cool and thank you for explaining it so well.
@@JouzuJuls ah I get it. That’s actually really simple. At least if I’m understanding it properly. は is used to just state the thing we’re talking about, and が is what’s used to talk about said thing?
So if I wanted to say something like 「僕は仕事がめちゃ面倒だ」would this be a correct sentence? I’m sure I got something wrong here, but would I be the topic and my work be the subject? Or did I flip the two and I should be the subject?
@@Adonisrose7493 Remember that every sentence must have an A car and B engine (see the next video in the series to learn more).
A car is what is marked が, and the B engine is the comment that modifies the A car. It is "logical" as it effects the logic of the sentence. は is "non-logical", it doesn't influence the sentence grammatically as much as it sets up the expectation in the listeners mind.
Remember that the subject is necessary is every sentence, so to test if your sentence is right, we can simply test whether what you marked as が was the thing you wanted to comment about.
The way you said it with 僕は implies that YOUR work is annoying. Everybody else's work? Dunno anything about that- but YOUR work only is annoying.
If you dropped 僕は, that would be the most natural way of expressing this. "Work is very annoying".
If you dropped 仕事が and left it as "it"- you would get "as for me, it is very annoying." Not it.
If you flipped it to "as for work, I am very annoying", that doesn't make sense and you just called yourself annoying.
If you marked 仕事 with は instead, then left が as it- this is also possible and also the most natural depending on context.
As in 仕事はめちゃ面倒だ. "As for work, it is very annoying." This would be a comment on not anybody's work in particular- but the fact that humans have to work in general- THAT'S annoying.
can we take a second to talk about how dripped out this guy is?
Stealin that Dragon of Dojima look 😉
@@JouzuJuls LEAVE SOME WOMEN FOR THE REST OF US
@@JohnDoe-bp9jm 😂
Wow this helps explain a lot logically. It'll still take some practice to get used to using them appropriately but this makes systematic sense.
I am more confused after this
Why
watch cure dolly, this video served as a great companion. he stated he’s not a teacher.
Simply you could take out what comes before は the sentence still means something.but maybe just not complete...however if you remove what comes before が the sentence wont mean anything at all.. grammatically imcomplete. and as for をyou can simply see it as an object. just a bit of my opinion if it helps😊
@@banzyyy7155 As a linguistics nut and someone who has been studying Japanese for 7+ years, this video does indeed make sense and as far as I can tell, is accurate. He does cram a lot in the video, however, and a lot of his examples are a bit wordy/awkward English, but overall it's a good video.
A similar English equivalent to "0が" is the implied subject "you" in imperitive sentences. E.g. "Go make your bed" = "[You] go make your bed". But, of course, we don't say "You go make your bed", and it sounds very awkward to a native English speaker.
That's alright! He crammed a lot in the video, and the content might be too advanced for whatever Japanese level you're at right now. I've been studying Japanese for a long time, and I study English linguistics for fun, and I was just barely able to catch everything.
7:12 I understand this sentence but what if the topic of "he'" is unknown
Is the sentence 彼が辛いものが好きだ grammaticaly correct? If not how would I say the sentence if "he" is not known.
I have been learning Korean for a while and I found out I might go to Japan in the next 2 years so now I am learning both. The particles in both languages work exactly the same.
는/은 = は 를/을=を 가/이=が
가 and が both sound like “ga”
It is so cool to see how these languages are related!
I find that in my university course, My Japanese Native teacher will occasionally pause on an explanation in the yookosou textbook and say "that's kind of not right" - but she explains it as written anyway because she doesn't know any better way to explain it in English.
Resources like Jules and Cure Dolly - I believe - is getting me though uni haha
The problem with the word Topic and Subject is that they are so related and often used interchangeably - take this definition that google gave me for topic - "a matter dealt with in a text, discourse, or conversation; a subject." - notice the last word ?
And here's another one - "A topic is a subject. It's what you're discussing or what a newspaper article is about, the theme of a documentary, or the focus of your term paper."
This one basically says that a topic is a subject so how are we to distinguish between the は and が particles
For a moment I thought that you're talking about the God Particle (as particle physicists call the Higgs bozon) and I was like "what is happening here?…" :D
kon'nichiwa, Jouzu-san! Great video. Arigatou!
I‘m not sure if I misunderstood something but from the way you explained it, if が indicates the subject, why wouldn’t クレープが食べたい mean “the crepe wants to eat” ?
Awesome! This question is very valid and proves you understand what's going on.
Allow me to explain how this works.
You know how in math, √2 is ±2, but most people write "2" and forget about "-2" ?
This is very similar. 私が食べたい actually simultaneously means both "I am eat want" and "I am eat wanting"; and similarly, クレープが食べたい simultaneously means "crepe is eat want" and "crepe is eat wanting".
This is not because a single sentence has "2 meanings", more that we can't accurate describe/translate たい into English without it having 2 interpretations. (Hence the weird "eat-wanting"/"eat-want-enducing" term that was used).
How do Japanese people make the choice to know which is which? It's something called "the rule of absurdity", which is a phenomenon seen in English too.
The rule of absurdity states that our brain leans towards the most normal, logical, and reasonable interpretation of something when it has multiple interpretations.
An example in English is "I saw a man on the hill with a telescope".
Your two immediate interpretations are either that I used a telescope to see a man on a hill- or that I saw a man on a hill with my naked eyes and that the man had a telescope.
What you've automatically excluded is the possibility that I 🪚 a man on a hill using a 🔭-- because this is absurd.
Further, the rule of absurdity states that if the speaker DOES want to say something absurd- it falls incumbent on the speaker to make that clear.
This info will go in a future video, but so far not many people have raised this question (which is very weird because I intentionally left this hole here for people to ask about it).
Thank you for asking and good job on identifying this! Hope this answers your question!
Ohh, so its more of a contextual thing. Thank you!
@@Icy1258 It's not really a contextual thing - the reason is not contextual, it's simply that the helper adjective たい changes how the verb is to be understood. Cure Dolly used the word "inducing", for lack of a better term (it's hard to use English to explain a concept which doesn't really exist in English).
I started learning japanese this week and memorised most of the hiragana and katakana now. My problem I just noticed on the thumbnail that は is wa but the website I learned it from told that its ha and わ is wa
は when used as just part of a word is pronounced "ha"- but when it is used as a particle (助詞) it is pronounced "wa".
@@liam3284 the は in こんにちは is no longer acting as a particle. This is because こんにちは is a fossil from old Japanese, meaning it doesn't play by modern day Japanese rules.
こんにちは should be seen as a single entity instead.
@@liam3284 「こにちは」is not written in 漢字 because what you wrote is not 「こにちは」it is 「今日」which is not a greeting, but rather the word for "today" / "this day". When you wrote 「今日は」you are just saying that the topic of discussion is today.
maybe the たい form can be translated as "induce/inducing an action" it may look even weirder for induce be a modal verb for english speaker
Great video! I watched Cure Dolly's videos on this, but your way of looking at it seemed to hit home for me a bit more. Question: isn't "たい" an auxiliary adjective? Meaning, it could be translated as "the action is desired/ wanted/ desirable" just like 猫が好きだ is "Cats are likeable." So, クレープが食べたい could be read as "Crepes are desirable to eat." Whereas, クレープを食べたい could be read as "[It's] desirable to eat crepes." (?), and クレープは食べたい "Crepes, [they're] desirable to eat." And the nuances could be read as: (が) Crepes are good, I want to eat one; (を) I'd like to eat a crepe. (は) I want to eat, I'll have crepes / I'd like to try crepes. If there's a better way to look at it, please share. Thanks!
Thank you very much! Glad you enjoyed the video, and good question. Yes, たい is an aux adj, but few people can define the word "auxiliary", hence the decision to use the word "helper" instead.
Don't get so hung up on translating it to English as ultimately there's no perfect way to translate the idea of たい; you're free to interpret it in whatever way works for you as long as it is consistent and gets the meaning across.
That said I do like your interpretations quite a lot and think they fit quite well! Good job! 👍
While listening, I had this image about WA, imagine a piece of paper for essay and at the top is the topic. The body of the essay is contributed by both party, so whenever someone uses WA, the topic at the top of the essay changes and the body of the essay start again and continues until someone uses WA again to change the topic.
Do you think this is the correct image to have?
damn im taking the jlpt n1 exam next month and im still confused by this.
The December batch eh? Good luck with that. Try breaking down other sentences that you're already familiar with by identifying what they REALLY mean (reveal the Øが).
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The only reason this is confusing is because you were likely taught some heavily flawed system of Japanese grammar in the past.
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If you ever found yourself questioning は vs が, you're a victim of Eihongo Grammar. People who have been taught the Øが from the beginning have never asked this question and don't even understand WHY it's a question.
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I would suggest throwing everything you think you know out the window and starting from day 1 with this.
This guy is so bad at explaining things he broke my brain and I temporarily forgot who I was because that's how confused I was.
How the f**k does "As for me IT is Japanese." make sense when you're talking about yourself?
*uses 3 crepes example*
And instead of elaborating on that he makes a sharp U Turn to an example about cats and elaborates on the crepes near the end 😭
Hi - my understanding was that ga was an Object marker, not a Subject marker. So in kureepu ga tabetai - crepes are the object, while the subject is not explicitly stated i.e. “I”. As in Japanese subjects are often not explicitly stated, but instead implied. Have I been misunderstanding until now?
OK, there is 2 things I don't get about it:
10:50 If は in the sentence makes so we are assuming the listener already knows about it, why is then defined generally as a particle that introduces a subject/topic to the conversation when the listener doesn't know about it? That's what makes me crazy with these japanese particle, it seems they simply didn't decide what function each particle would have, so they just mixed everything up and there's that.
12:50 If the actor is not necessarily the subject, then we need to redefine what subject means. Subject is the one who os characterized or the one who make the action of a verb. If that's not true to japanese, then we need to redefine it and ideally not call it subject but something else.
Thanks for watching and leaving your questions here!
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Let me try to help. You'll come to learn and agree that Japanese is actually a very easy and very logical language- much more so than English, but the biggest problem is that it is mistaught to beginners who are unable to separate right from wrong yet.
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To respond to your first point about the は particle being "defined generally as a particle that inteoduces a subject", the answer is simple because it is generally defined wrong. There is no middle ground, no compromise to make the two make sense. You've been taught misinformation. That is the sole reason Japanese particles seem confusing to you and the sole reason they seem to have not made up their mind on what does what. Matter of fact, it is the sole reason は vs が even exists in the first place. This is why Japanese people and people who follow stricty Cure Dolly's system NEVER have to question は vs が.
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To answer your second question, you're probably right on the English definition of a linguisitc "subject", however, we don't have to redefine anything at all. Remember that we are dealing with Japanese and the thing that is marked by が is the 主語(しゅご [lit. Main Speech]), so if you think the word "subject" is too confusing, simply stop using it and use 主語 instead. Whatever you've read about a linguistic subject does not neccesarily apply to 主語 because Japanese is not English. Do not treat Japanese as if it were English and stop playing by English grammar rules. Treat Japanese as Japanese. The function of the Japanese 主語 should be very easy to understand because it only ever marks the thing doing/being the ENGINE of a complete logical clause. Please watch the next video in the series if you are unfamiliar with sentence ending engines: th-cam.com/video/7fv1V-BB9NI/w-d-xo.html
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Hope this was able to clear things up for you! If you have any more questions or want some stuff to be cleared up, please let me know! 😁
@JouzuJuls
Interesting. Never heard it explained like this. Closest woukd be other teachers here on TH-cam telling us you can omit a lot of stuff.
Doesn't help that I've seen many different terms for 'subject' and 'topic' and worse some who use those interchangeably (some being Japanese people themselves).
I'll look through Cure Dolly's stuff again but I will say I found her explanations confusing and some a bit overcomplicated and I found better understanding elsewhere. One I saw a user asking for clarification and she replied in a way I could understand to that comment which made me wonder why she didn't lead with that. But then again everyone's different.
Could it be something like "the crape is wanted for eating"?
This video is great, but now I am confused about why は exists if you need が more? Why is が built into every sentence? Wouldn’t は be the one built into all sentences because it marks what is being talked about?
Thank you for the comment and question!
To clarify, it's not that が has to be in every sentence, it's that the subject must be in every sentence. This is true of not just Japanese, but of every language in the world. It just so happens that in Japanese, the subject is always marked with が.
Remember that は does not mark what you are talking about, it marks the topic. What "you are talking about" would be the subject, and that is marked が.
Please refer to 5:00 where I used the example sentence 私は日本人だ. In this sentence, we are not talking about 私, we are talking about "it". The topic simply clarifies and fills in the gap of what "it" is.
If you really wanted to say "I am Japanese" you would need to say 私が日本人だ as that keeps "I" as the subject.
Hello. Thank you for your video. I really appreciate your efforts in explaining things in a different way. But even I agree with some explanations (I really like the idea of "receptive sentence" instead of "passive instead", I could also add "active sentence" could be replaced by something like "emitting sentence"), there are some things I don't agree. Thus, I disagree when you say the が particle is the most fundamental thing in Japanese particles and sentences, or that there is an (even invisible) が particle in every sentence, and I think someone would still misunerstand the が particle by watching this video.
In fact, that assumption of a so called "invisible が particle" contradicts with what you said around 10:14 about the fact that the は particle emphasises what follows and that the が emphasises what is before: I totally agree with that, but when you say there is an invisible が, it would be the sentence emphasises what is before and what is after AT THE SAME TIME, which is not possible. That means when a sentence has a は particle that is marking the subject of an action or state, there is no invisible が particle at all, because both particule are totally incompatible with one another.
The most fundamental thing to understand is what follows: a sentence does not need anything else than a "core" to be grammatically "complete". A core can be:
- a verb
- an adjective (the so called "い adjectives")
- an adjectival noun (the so called "な adjectives") or a nound, followed by an auxiliary.
And if we add some elements marked (or not) by particles, so if we add specification, we change the sence of that sentence. Thus, the sentences 日本人です, 私は日本人です and 私が日本人です does not mean the same thing:
- the first one means roughly "This is a Japanese person", with a context allowing us to understand to what "that" is referring ("that" can be "I", or "that person", or "my father", or whatever);
- the second one uses what I call "pointer particle は" that is "highlighting" 私 ("I"), so that we emphasise on the information we give about "I", in other words 日本人です. Such a sentence is useful when, for example, someone asks to me and my friend from which country we come, so that I can answer 私は日本人です。この人は中国人です (As for I, it's Japanese. As for this person, this is Chinese.").
- the third one lets us emphasising on "I" to whom an already known information is applying. Such a sentence can be used for example when someone is asking "Among you guys, who is the Japanese person?" and I answer "It is I who is Japanese".
So, the Japanese structure is not at all centered on the が particle, which is not more fundamental than other case particles likes に or と. But if we want to understand what the が particle really means, we have to go back in time, at the time of classical Japanese when the が particle was almost completely interchangeable with the の particle. Actually, both が and の particles in structures A が B or A の B have the same fundamental function: attributing to the element "B" the other element "A". "A" can be an object, someone, an action or a state. But after time passed, a separation was made between both particles and about on what kind of B it applies:
- as for A の B, "B" is a thing (object, person...)
- as for A が B, "B" is an action or a state.
But even nowadays, there are still remnants of that age both particles were interchangeable:
- in 我が structure, it has the same meaning as 私の in a formal language, e.g. 我が国 meaning "My country", or 鬼が島 (often spelled as 鬼ヶ島) meaning "The Oni's Island";
- in "attributive clauses that are not too long, we can use the の particle instead of the が particle.
So, we can analyse a sentence like 日本人が父です as follows: 日本人 ("the Japanese") is being attributed to the fact of "being my father" (so, "It is the Japanese [here in this room] who is my father").
If I say 猫が好きです, the element 猫 is being attributed to the fact of being "likeable".
If I say クレープが食べたい, the element クレープ is being attributed to the fact of "being in a state of giving wanting to eat".
If I say 私が食べた, the element 私 is being attributed to the fact of "having eaten.
We can interprete が particle is "marking the subject" in those example, as a possible consequence of the "attributive function".
But if I replace now the が particle with the の particle and remove the core (verb or "noun + auxiliary"), it is not a "marking the subject" function anymore, but this is still an "attributive function" in attributive clauses. Thus:
- 日本人の父 can be translated as "My Japanese father" or "My father, the Japanese", or "My father who is Japanese";
- 猫の好き means "the likeable cats";
- クレープの食べたい「人」 means "[the person being] in the state of wanting to eat crepes";
- 私の食べたクレープ can be translated as "The crepes I ate".
The difference with the original sentences is that those new sentences are not "complete" anymore, so they need a new "core" to be complete. For example, 日本人の父に会いましょう which means "I will meet my Japanese father".
In summary, there is no "invisible が particle", in the same way there is no "invisible の particle" when I say e.g. 猫です instead of 私の猫です (the second sentences emphasises more on the fact the cat is "mine", so it has not the same meaning than the first one).
As for the rest of the video, just one more thing: A を 食べたい structure is not that uncommon, but I just wanted to say such a pattern was already used in classical Japanese in ancient times. But I agree with your analysis of both A を 食べたい and A が 食べたい structures.
Hi, thanks for your well thought out comment. Allow to elaborate on 10:14 and explain why this is not a contradiction.
The "Emphasis" that は and が exudes is not real. It is a result of their function. For the same reason that when you say "As for X" in English, you put "emphasis" on X. It's not *Emphasis* like what I just did with the asterisks, or like if you said it with more stress- that's real emphasis when you're trying to put more weight on a certain word.
The topic marker makes the thing a topic- and thus because we noted it as a topic, we are talking about it as opposed to anything else. パンは食べた implies that I ate bread, but not anything else. Do you see how "emphasis" is not real, but a result of the topic? This is the same for が and it's emphasis.
When we say "I eat bread" in English, we are saying that "I" is the person eating the bread- 私がパンを食べた. In Japanese, this would be unnatural as the ego of the sentence is usually left unsaid- meaning パンを食べた is the natural way of saying it Japanese. In this case the subject is Ø. When we specifically say that 私 is the subject, that deviates from Ø and thus- puts emphasis on 私.
It is not the case that blindly using は and が randomly assigns some "emphasis" onto words for no reason. Once we understand the reasoning behind "emphasis" and what it actually is, we can realize that 10:14 is not a contradiction.
To explain it using your examples:
日本人だ is Øが 日本人だ
Ø is a Japanese person.
Where "Ø" is marked as the subject. Where does the emphasis go? It goes to Ø. Which means there is no emphasis here because it isn't mentioned. Emphasis is not a result of the particle, but the result of the function of the particle.
私は日本人だ is 私は Øが 日本人だ
As for me, Ø is a Japanese person.
Where does the emphasis go? Right, we specifically stated that "As for me", not that we stressed it at all, but just because we mentioned it as opposed to anything else- there is now "emphasis" on it. As with before, Ø is the subject- which isn't mentioned. Which means we didn't add any "emphasis" on it simply by not mentioning it. Grammatically, a subject MUST exist in every sentence in every language however.
私が日本人だ
I am a Japanese person.
As opposed to the normal way of saying it (日本人だ), we have made the conscious decision to clearly state that *I* am a Japanese person. Because if you didn't want to say this, you would not have needed to include 私 as your clearly defined subject, if you have no need to clearly define it- you have no "emphasis" on it.
There is no contradiction here because "emphasis" isn't real.
Going back in time does not help solve modern Japanese structure as the use of が to mean の is a fossil of the past. I understand what you're saying with the "subject function is a consequence of the attributive function", but modern Japanese has already moved on from this.
You do not need to understand what the ら is うちら、こちら、and いくら are doing in order to understand those 3 terms. You also don't need to understand こんにちは as the original 今日＋は as it has completely changed.
If you claim there is no Øが, it now falls incumbent on you to explain what the subject of every sentence is as every sentence must have a subject in every language. If there is no subject, there is no language. To have a language is to make comments about certain things- to make comments about certain things is to have a subject to talk about.
When we have a model that can describe Japanese with a clear, consistent, and unchanging subject- I believe this to be the most useful model of Japanese.
As for the commonality of を食べたい or が食べたい, "uncommon" is a subjective word. Google the 2 terms with quotation marks and see how many results show up using each one. I understand you want to say it's "not exactly rare", but my point is that it's simply uncommon, and the numbers don't lie.
@@JouzuJuls Thank you for your comment. I'll answer point by point.
I think talking about "real emphasis" makes the thing more confusing, because it implies the learner have to pay attention to the difference between "real emphasis" and "unreal emphasis". In other words, I'm not convinced about the fact there would be no contradiction in what you explained about that.
"パンは食べた implies that I ate bread, but not anything else."
I disagree. In my opinion, it does not imply "I ate bread but not anything else", but rather "What I made particularly with that bread is eating it". Thus, supposing I'm right in what I'm stating, the emphasis would be after and not before.
Let me change a little that situation. This time, someone is asking me what I ate the last time. Since it was some time ago, I a have to think about it because I am trying to remember. So, I could answer: あの、パンは食べた。えっと、チーズも食べた。でも、デサートは食べなかった。In this situation, you can see the first sentence does not imply I did not eat anything else than that bread, because after, we remember another thing we ate that time, using the も particle to add something else I ate.
"When we say "I eat bread" in English, we are saying that "I" is the person eating the bread- 私がパンを食べた. In Japanese, this would be unnatural as the ego of the sentence is usually left unsaid- meaning パンを食べた is the natural way of saying it Japanese. " Agreed.
"Where does the emphasis go? It goes to Ø. Which means there is no emphasis here because it isn't mentioned. " Agreed. But just after:
"Emphasis is not a result of the particle, but the result of the function of the particle. " Does that not mean the same thing? I'm afraid I didn't really understand.
"私は日本人だ is 私は Øが 日本人だ As for me, Ø is a Japanese person. Where does the emphasis go? Right, we specifically stated that "As for me", not that we stressed it at all, but just because we mentioned it as opposed to anything else- there is now "emphasis" on it." I disagree for the same reason as your example with bread: in my opinion, this sentence means "One thing I am is a Japanese person". So I think the emphasis is on "being a Japanese person", not on "I".
"私が日本人だ
I am a Japanese person.
As opposed to the normal way of saying it (日本人だ), we have made the conscious decision to clearly state that I am a Japanese person. Because if you didn't want to say this, you would not have needed to include 私 as your clearly defined subject, if you have no need to clearly define it- you have no "emphasis" on it." Agreed (if I understood well what you said), so I interpret the emphasis to be on "I".
@@JouzuJuls "Grammatically, a subject MUST exist in every sentence in every language however."
I totally agree with that, but I do not with your interpretation using this concept of "zero particle", which I considerer being a cheap attempt to find an English grammar logic in a quite different language. My interpretation is as follows: the subject of a Japanese is always inside its core (or "predicate", that means a verb, adjective, or "noun + auxiliary"), and it is always "it" that is the subject of every Japanese sentence. It is a little like Latin. For example, there is this famous sentence from Julius Caesar saying "Veni, vidi, vici", which means "I came, I saw, I conquered". Where is the subject here? it is included inside the conjugated form of the verbs implying "I". There is no "zero whatever" in that sentence. And speaking about Latin, the concept of particles in Japanese reminds me a lot the concept of Latin declension.
This is the same thing in Japanese, but in a much easier way because there is no conjugated form depending on the subject, which implies the subject is one and only one thing, the most "neutral" way of specifying a subject: "it" (or "this", "that", "what"). And a Japanese sentence does not need anything else than a core to be complete, without no need to imagine such a complicated concept as "invisible zero particle". This is the most fundamental concept to understand in Japanese. We add things in a sentence in order to add specification, emphasis, personal touch, etc. For example, we add a nound marked by a が particle in order to do nothing else but identifying what "it" represents. So, let's analyse again those sentences:
パンは食べた : "A thing it did to the bread is eating it"
私がパンを食べた : "What ate bread is I"
パンを食べた : "It ate bread"
私は日本人だ : "A thing I am is a Japanese person"
This content seems almost identical to Cure Dolly's, other than the 1 point you disagree on? I'm glad you credited her, because it's mostly her work.
「は」と「が」はおそらく日本語を学ぶ際に一番初めにと言ってもいいくらいの初期段階で出てくる項目だと思われます。日本語の中で言うとそれくらい初歩的なものなのですが外国人には相当難しいものだと思われます。JLPTの1級を取得した人でもこの「は」と「が」の使い方を間違って使っている場面を見ることが少なくありません。ところが日本人だと「は」と「が」は絶対と言っていいくらい間違いません。何故なら両者は全く違うものなので、極端に言うと「は」と「が」を入れ違うだけで全く違う意味の文章となるので間違えようがないのです。ところが外国人学習者の場合はJLPTの1級を取得していたり、いわゆるペラペラに日本語を話せる人でも間違っているのをよく目にするので、外国人にとっては相当難しい概念なのだろうと推測します。
動画を見てくれて、そしてコメントを残してありがとうございます！
この動画の内容（特に「Øが」の存在）は多分日本人にはわかりにくい概念と思います、なぜならこの概念は英語の "it" と同じ、日本語の場合に "it"はほとんど表さないですね。従って、日本人が日本語を教えている時、こんなアイデアを考えることさえできませんね。
それからは多くの日本語学習者が「は」と「が」の区別をわからない原因になったと思います。
「は」と「が」という概念が特に難しいとは言えなくて、普通に教え方が悪いともいます。「Øが」を表したら、すごくわかりやすい概念になれるともいえますよ。たいていの先生がこんなに簡単な概念を理解していないことが一番残念なことです。
そしてJLPTの１級を突破した学習者がまだ日本語を喋れないということが本当にいますね… でもこれは学習者のせいじゃなくて、JLPTの方式が普通にばかばかしいと思います。
この世に「話す」ことを一切試してない言語能力試験は本当にJLPTしかないらしい。他人とこんな試験があるなんて言ったら、絶対に冗談だと思われるでしょうね。
@@JouzuJuls sadly, because JLPT helps make JP immigration process easier for certain visas, it is too important to not do, if that is the end goal
Is the にparticle marking the actor (dog) in the sentence also considered an indirect object marker? Or is that a different function of the particle に？
It's a different function. There IS a way to explain に as the target particle doing what it's normally doing, but it's harder to explain and understand. I'll make a dedicated video for it eventually, but for now- for receptive sentences, you can just treat the に as having the ability to mark the actor of the sub-action ✌️
@@JouzuJuls Tysm!
can with wa (as for topic) also kind of be translated to (topic 'says') with 'says' being broadly defined?
You can translate it whatever way you want. As long as you understand what it's actually doing. I translate は as "Speaking of ..." because that's what a topic is. "Says" is a bit strange when you have something like 「あの部屋には」, if you used "says" it'd be like "The 'in' of that room says". As opposed to "Speaking of the 'in' of that room", which kinda flows a bit better imo.
But again, the translation doesn't really matter, what matters is understanding the underlying principle.
@@JouzuJuls ‘Speaking of’ does actually make more sense, ありがとうございます。
Having watched a lot of cure dolly’s series and having immersed a lot now, I finally understand what you mean now.
Thanks for having introduiced me to this concept
I am very happy I found this video. My only regret is that I found it about a week before leaving Japan...
Whoa. That’s so helpful actually.
I like your eyebrows.. あんたの眉毛が好きだわ。
Thank you bro
Great insight, thank you !!
I am close to the N2 level, but I never thought of it that way (and no teacher ever told me so !)
Also thank you for explaining in the comments the two possible meanings of「食べたい」、because this seemed unclear to me in the video.
By the way, do you also have this kind of insight for particules に and で ?
Despite from what the textbook told me, and the instinct I developped with experience, it still seems pretty random to me... but maybe you have an insight that would make it make more sense ? 😊
First of all, good job on the video, howveer, I have question.
So.... given the rules you established in this video, I understand クレープは食べたい to mean "As for the crepe, I am wanting to eat it" and クレープを食べたい as "want to eat the crepe." However, I now no longer understand クレープが食べたい, I used to understand it as "I want to eat the crepe," but now I don't know, becuase according to your rules, the crepe, being the subject, wants to eat. Of course, however, that's not what it actually means, in reality, it means "i want to eat the crepe," at least according to online translators. I guess what I am trying to say is, how is it that 私が食べたい means "I want to eat," but クレープが食べたい means "The crepe is making me want to eat it" or more simply "I want to eat the crepe" and not "The crepe wants to eat" ? あらかじめにありがとう
I really love this question because it shows who's paying attention and who's not. Your comment proves that you are indeed paying attention and this is a very real and very valid question.
Please allow me to use my copy pasted answer from other people who have asked the same thing:
You know how in math, √2 is ±2, but most people write "2" and forget about "-2" ?
This is very similar. 私が食べたい actually simultaneously means both "I am eat want" and "I am eat wanting"; and similarly, クレープが食べたい simultaneously means "crepe is eat want" and "crepe is eat wanting".
How do Japanese people make the choice to know which is which? It's something called "the rule of absurdity", which is a phenomenon seen in English too.
The rule of absurdity states that our brain leans towards the most normal, logical, and reasonable interpretation of something when it has multiple interpretations.
An example in English is "I saw a man on the hill with a telescope".
Your two immediate interpretations are either that I used a telescope to see a man on a hill- or that I saw a man on a hill with my naked eyes and that the man had a telescope.
What you've automatically excluded is the possibility that I 🪚 a man on a hill using a 🔭-- because this is absurd.
Further, the rule of absurdity states that if the speaker DOES want to say something absurd- it falls incumbent on the speaker to make that clear.
Hope this clears things up!
@@JouzuJuls Ah, thank you I wasn't quite sure but you've confirmed things for me!!
@@JouzuJuls I also want to thank you for the video, and ask a question ;)
I picked up from somewhere that the 〜たい form renders a verb into an adjective, and so far in my Japanese learning this has been a helpful and seemingly correct idea. Now, to make syntactical sense of’クレープを食べたい’, I imagined the zeroが to be 私が, and ‘クレープをたべたい’ to collectively form an adjective (‘crepe-wanting-to-eat) that applies to the invisible subject 私が. (I am crepe-wanting-to-eat).
Does this make sense? I thought I’d post this question here as it seems to be relevant to the question above. Thanks again!
…今は本当にクレープを食べたい人です！🤤😅
@@glenn7484 Thank you very much, glad you enjoyed the video!
You have the right idea, but the difference is that たい does not render the verb as anything. たい is たい and the verb is a verb, it doesn't matter what you attach to the verb- it stays a verb. What changes is the "engine" of the sentence as it will now be たい (adjective).
So you go from a "A does B" verb ending sentence to a "A is B" adj ending sentence, but the verb is still a verb. ^^
Idk if I like “as for [topic]” as a substitute forは. “As for [topic]” seems to imply a context where other things were being discussed. I think of it more as “regarding [topic]”
I think redoing this video into two parts. The zero ga explanations with no verbs. Then a different section with zero ga explanations with verbs.
Wouldn’t this be an exception?
The way to ask someone if they can speak Chinese is “中国語が話せますか” where the word denoting the Chinese language is marked with が。 This would seem to make Chinese the subject. If 中国語 is the subject, that would mean I’m asking if the Chinese language itself “can speak”.
If you look [話せる] up in an actual Japanese dictionary (like a dictionary *from* Japan, for Japanese people), one of the definitions is [話し相手とするに足りる] (roughly, "to be sufficient enough to converse with someone") In Japanese you would interpret that sentence as "Will Chinese *suffice for conversation*? which makes "Chinese" the subject, doing the action of being sufficent for talking.
*Lots* of Japanese verbs have less ego-centric definitions in Japanese dictionaries. Like [分かる] isn't just "to understand", it's "to become clear or understandable".
@@HowManyRobot Thanks for the reply. Also, in the creator’s conjugation cheat sheet video, he explains that the potential form (え-stem plus る) performs a kind of double duty and can represent both the ideas of “can do X” and “is X-able.” With this, the sentence could be analyzed as “Is Chinese speakable,” with Chinese being the grammatical subject. In fact, the exact word 話せる is used as an example in 8:09 of that video, showing both “can speak” and “is speakable” as semantic options.
In the crepe example which one would you use to sound the most natural and make the most sense in Japanese.
Is wa needed then?
If i say i want THIS, i use ga to emphasize this.
If i use wa, it'll be like as for this, i want it.
I guess?
But still tho, its the same thing, right? Im still talking about THIS whether i make it the topic or the subject?
Please explain.
If 私はクレープが食べたい and 私がクレープは食べたい basically mean I want to eat crepe in one way or another. How would I say the crepe wants to eat me? Would this be a case where using を makes sense and could be accepted? So would it be クレープが私を食べたい then?
Bingo. On that note, this following question also shows up :
If 私が食べたい means "I am eat want", why doesn't クレープが食べたい mean "the crepe is eat want"?
And if you had this question then good job, as that's a very valid question that proves you understand what's going on.
Allow me to explain this too.
You know how in math, √2 is ±2, but most people write "2" and forget about "-2" ?
This is very similar. 私が食べたい actually simultaneously means both "I am eat want" and "I am eat wanting"; and similarly, クレープが食べたい simultaneously means "crepe is eat want" and "crepe is eat wanting".
How do Japanese people make the choice to know which is which? It's something called "the rule of absurdity", which is a phenomenon seen in English too.
The rule of absurdity states that our brain leans towards the most normal, logical, and reasonable interpretation of something when it has multiple interpretations.
An example in English is "I saw a man on the hill with a telescope".
Your two immediate interpretations are either that I used a telescope to see a man on a hill- or that I saw a man on a hill with my naked eyes and that the man had a telescope.
What you've automatically excluded is the possibility that I 🪚 a man on a hill using a 🔭-- because this is absurd.
Further, the rule of absurdity states that if the speaker DOES want to say something absurd- it falls incumbent on the speaker to make that clear.
So in your situation of the crepe wanting to eat you- yes, specifying 私を is extremely important. It may even be beneficial to specify that the crepe is sentient too, just to remove all doubts!
@@JouzuJuls Got it. Thanks. This video opened like a third eye for me.
Is the particle が marking a subject in contrast sentences? If so it doesn't make sense to me. For example わたしはいぬはすきですがねこはすきじゃない。Or is it a different が in this case, like it's a different は marking contrast rather than topic?
@@schmeardo That is an entirely different が called the contrastive が, it has nothing to do with the subject marker が.
@@JouzuJuls Thanks for the clarification. It's something that isn't really explained by many people so it's easy to get confused when people make blanket statements about function.
If you do one of these for と you'd officially be the GOAT
If you say that は marks only the topic, then what's the difference between the topic and the subject? This still confused me even after watching the video several times.
は marks the topic of the sentence. The topic of a sentence tells us what the sentence is about. The は places emphasis on what comes after the 私. Therefore it essentially gives us the context or background for what follows the 私. For eg. 私はりんごが好き, here 私は is letting us know that the sentence is about me and what I find likeable and that’s why the video uses the translation “As for me…”
However が marks the subject. The subject being who/what is performing the action in the sentence. So it’s an identifier and it puts emphasis on what comes before が. Using the same example 私はりんごが好き, if you think of すき as meaning “to be likeable or to be pleasing” then you will understand the sentence as “the apple is likeable or pleasing (to me)”
Another example 明日は雨がふります(As for tomorrow, it will rain). This sentence let’s us know that we are talking about tomorrow (明日) which is the topic marked by は, but the main action being performed is ふります (falling) which will be performed by the rain (雨) marked by subject が
This is the fundamental meaning of these two particles
I tried to explain it based on how I understood it so…. I Hope this helps 😅
in the last sentence will this be correct, "inu ga mizu o nomareta" ? if yes what will be difference in both ?
Because “inu” in your case is subject(actor) and “nomareta” is the receptive form + past tense of “nomu”, it can be understood as the dog receives the action of “drank”, which means “the dog was drunk by ….” in English sense. However, “mizu” here is marked by “o” as an object which actions act on and works similarly as receptive form, so I think this sentence doesn’t make sense.
You can change this sentence to “inu ga(subject, known as actor as well) mizu o(object, marked by wo/o) nonda(past tense of nomu)”, meaning that the dog does the action "drank" directly(original, non-receptive form) and the water is what the action "drank" acts on, so the sentance can be simply translated into “The dog drank the water.”
Hindi is similar and I am realising it after seeing native English speakers struggle with this way of subject in the language. Japanese sentence structure is pretty natural for me, because I am a native hindi speaker
Finally someone is picking up on where Curedolly left off. RIP Dolly. I remember discovering her stuff early in my journey and it really helped. Unfortunately, even many japanese people will frequently say stuff like "And here we have WA, that marks the subject." If only the topic and the subject werent so often referring to the same thing but they often are and that causes that confusion.
Btw. try to slow down the talking speed just a tad bit. We dont mind a longer video 😂
Yes, unfortunately even native Japanese teachers (_some_ of them - not all) will try to shoehorn Japanese into the Euro/English-focused grammatical model, and come up with confusing things like the word with は being the subject, and that が sometimes is the subject and sometimes is the object (the latter is typically explained with "if it's about a *feeling* then が is used to mark objects instead of を". Which is completely incorrect, as explained in this video. Of course native Japanese speakers will never get confused by は／が／を and are therefore unable to see the issue here. As for Japanese language structure in general I like Kaname Naito's channel. Here he explains the basic concept of "choose a topic, then comment on it" (paraphrased): th-cam.com/video/U2q5GsB0swQ/w-d-xo.html
@@tohaason oh yes Kaname‐Sama is the man for this stuff. He's on my list already 💪
There is lots of evidence she is not dead and is part of a bizzare cult
WHERE ARE THE SECOND AND THIRD VIDEOS
if 「クレープが食べたい」means "the crepe is making me want to eat it, then should not 「クレープは ((私)が) 食べたい」mean something like "as for the crepé i am making it want to eat me"/"as for the crepé I am eat want make" ?? If not then how would i say that "I am making the crepé want to eat me"? ( I wrote 私 instead of zero in the parenthesis since that is what is most of the time implied)
Understanding this would make the video a lot more comprehensible to me, but great video anyways thanks.
So, does it mean "猫が好きだ" can be interpreted in some context like "cat is likeable (for someone, not me)"?
Yes, technically- however Japanese doesn't like to say exactly how someone else feels because you are not that person- and you cannot be 100% sure of how they feel.
So if you were to say that cats are likable for someone else, you could say "(someone else)は猫が好きだそうだ。
The そうだ is like "seems like" or "I've heard".
So instead of saying "cats are likable for this person" as a fact, you'll say "it seems like cats are likable for this person"
Without the そうだ it's still grammatically correct and would convey exactly what you mean- but it's not as natural.
@@JouzuJuls thanks! Your explanations are brilliant.
This makes not only the grammar easier, but the japanese mentality more understandable.
During the video i notice that it hasen't any new concepts that i didn't knew, i learned all of this in portuguese classes (my native language). I just never tried to apply it, now just seems too easy that i look dumb. Lol
Yesss, precisely that! The whole concept is NOT unique to Japanese, languages like Spanish have it too! Stuff like "me gusta el tequila" does NOT mean "I like tequila", it instead means "Tequila pleases me". All the confusion only comes up because English REALLY wants to put "I" as the subject of the sentence even when "I" is NOT the subject!
@@JouzuJuls the way that english subjects works still confuses me even that i use english as much as my native language. Feels natural but when i stop to think things like "it" and that it's so common to overuse subjects in english.
6:26 then you drop the を and the resulting sentence still works.
So to differentiate Japanese 'wa' and 'ga'. Japanese separates topic and subject. English combines topic and subject.
So が would be the correct in the crepe sentence?
So basically from what I understood here,
"犬は食べたい" doesn't necessarily mean I want to eat dogs, but could mean the dog wants to eat something, and it depends on the context.
"犬が食べたい" 's more accurate translation would be, "The dog is want to eat."; And,
"犬を食べたい" is the one that fits the accepted translation of "I want to eat dogs."
Thanks for the great video! My question is: can we say 「私が日本人です」? What I've heard mostly is 「私は日本人です」, which translates into "As for me, it is Japanese." Does the former mean "I am Japanese?"
It depends on the context.
If you are talking to someone without anyone else around you two, and that this person is asking you "What is your nationality?", you can just answer 日本人です。Indeed, the context is 100% clear about the fact you are talking about yourself. Using 私は would be unnatural in that context, unless for some reason you really want to emphasise the information on yourself about the fact you are Japanese.
If someone is asking two persons what is their nationality, you can answer この人は中国人です。私は日本人です。In that case, the は particle has a "contrastive function" (more than just a "topic marker function"), because you and the person next to you have different nationalities, so at first, you "point on" the person next to two to emphasise the information you give about that person; then you point on yourself to emphasise the information you give about yourself.
If there are many people inside a room and someone aks "Among you, who is the Japanese person?", you can answer 私が日本人です。This time, the already known information "being Japanese" is attributed to yourself (that is, in my opinion, the true meaning of the が particle: attribute some action or state to someone or something), so that the emphasised information is not the fact of being Japanese, but the fact it is YOU who are the Japanese person. So, this sentence roughly means "It is I who is the Japanese person."
@@Rudolphhhhhh Your answer is 100% correct and perfect. (Even in your comment thread with the video owner below) The video owner is just thinking of Japanese with an English brain and making things more complicated. He doesn't understand the difference of は and が, the explanation for たい doesn't make sense because he doesn't understand Japanese at the core level.
I dont understand where do I place the 0"ga"?
Every single Japanese sentence is composed of 2 essential parts that cannot change. The A car (subject marked が) and the B engine (sentence ender, check the next video in this series). The A car MUST come before the B engine.
.
For example:
1) 猫がいる。
The A car here is 猫が, therefore we can already see the が. The CAT is the subject. いる is the verb sentence ender (B engine). This sentence is "A does B", "The cat does the act of existing".
2) 猫だ。
As you can see, there is no visible が. 猫だ is simply the noun sentence ender (B Engine). The sentence right now translates to "is cat", but WHAT is cat? The answer is simple- "IT" is cat, because "IT" can only be understood via context. To represent "IT" in Japanese, we use Øが.
Øが猫だ。Would be showing what's ACTUALLY happening. Øが is the A car, the subject is Ø, in other words- "IT". The full sentence becomes "IT is cat".
おれがボールを投げた for 6:09 right? Know the subject is hidden is one thing, and it helps understand how duolingo translations are interpretations and not literal, but know that there's a ga hidden... Duolingo works but gotta be careful to not take things literal there.
All this courses focus on showing an english friendly waty to write the sentence instead of something that would sound weird.
Stay away from Duolingo at all costs, particularly when it comes to Japanese. It's worse than a waste of time.
@@tohaason I don't use only duolingo tho.
What is the difference between topic and subject??
subject is the thing that is doing the verb in the sentence (ie it's a purely grammatical distinction) whereas the topic is just what you're talking about basically