wa は, ga が and o を

The most common "particles" in Japanese are wa は ga が and o を.

If I were seriously trying to teach you how to speak Japanese, now I should write a very long explanation about when should you use them, and soon smoke would come out from your ears. Or I could use a short, simple explantion, that would be too simple and would confuse you for years.

Fortunately for me, I'm just trying to teach you to understand Japanese. So, for now, I'll just say that wa はand ga が mean nothing, they are left untranslated. Think of them as commas:

kole これ wa は gokuhi ごくひ na な nnda んだ this comma top secret is <I tell you> = this is top secret

!tomodachi !ともだち !ga !が !dekilu !できる !to !と friend comma can make if = if (he) can make friends...

The japanese use the particle o を as a kindness to foreigners, to remind them that the word carrying o を must be moved after the next verb when translating to English:

daleka だれか ga が kolosu ころす somebody comma kills = somebody will kill (him/them)

daleka だれか o を kolosu ころす somebody (prease don't forget to move the word "somebody" to the right of the verb "kills") will kill = will kill somebody

In manganese, these words are skipped more often than not:

daleka だれか kolosu ころす somebody will kill = will kill somebody OR somebody will kill

This sentence is unacceptable in correct Japanese. In correct grammar you MUST add either ga が or o を (which makes clear who is killing whom) or wa は (which doesn't), and in written Japanese one of the three is used nearly always.

However, in manganese (and in real spoken Japanese when there are no foreigners around) daleka kolosu だれか ころす is just short for daleka o kolosu だれか を ころす. So the sentence daleka kolosu だれか ころす is not really ambiguous. If you shout it out loud, people will thing that you are saying "(I am) going to kill somebody". Most people say daleka ga kolosu だれか が ころす with a ga が when they mean "somebody will kill him/her(it/them".

Personal Pronouns
How to Read Japanese Manga
Articles, Gender and Number

Copyright (c) 2003-2008 Jordi Mas Trullenque.
email: jordimastrullenque at gmail dot com
http://purl.oclc.org/NET/manga/elwayelga.en.html
Last revised: 2008-10-03