What's the difference between the Japanese particles は (wa) and が (ga)?

That's... somewhat hard to answer. A few linguists tried, and they ended up writing an entire book. It's a big topic, to say the least.

To give a more thorough answer than that, we're going to have to put on our goggles and go for a dive. We'll start off by laying some linguistic groundwork, see what Japanese people say about は (wa) vs が (ga), and then look at some practical examples.

More specifically, we'll talk about:

What is a grammatical particle?

If you're not sure what a grammatical particle is, then

A crash course into the basics of は (wa) and が (ga)

If you want a super exhaustive look at all the different usages of は (wa) and が (ga), check out our master post on Japanese particles. We went ham. If that post was a book, it'd go thunk when you dropped it on a table.

Here, we're going to be more concise.

We're talking about the difference between は (wa) and が (ga), so instead of giving you a laundry list of alllllllll the stuff that each particle can do, we're going to focus on disambiguating them.

The purpose of が (ga)

In Japanese, が (ga) is what's called a , a "case" particle. Case particles attach to nouns (or noun phrases) in order to show the role they play in a sentence.

There are several different grammatical cases, but here's a few basic ones:

Verbs are the lifeblood of Japanese sentences, and case markers show how a particular word or phrase in a sentence is related to the main verb of that sentence.

If we analyze the above example sentence from this "how things are related to the verb" perspective, we'd could say that:

Make sense, kind of?

We use these same cases in English, so they should make some intuitive sense to you. The difference is that English uses word order to show the case of words, whereas Japanese makes you use a particle to physically mark the case of each word or phrase.

Some Japanese examples

That's some sort of heavy linguistic theory, so let's get hands on. Look through the following Japanese sentences and think about what が (ga) is doing in each one:

This can get somewhat complex because there are different types of verbs and Japanese sometimes decides that something should function as a verb when English doesn't think so (†looking at "beautiful" up there in the second example sentence!), but this should hopefully be relatively straightforward.

The purpose of は (wa)

In Japanese, は (wa) is what's called a , a "binding" particle. Binding particles "bind" to other words/particles, "garnishing" them with some sort of additional nuance. The nuance added by は (wa) in particular is to promote something from being merely a word in a sentence to being the topic of a conversation.

Tha's clear as mud, so do me a favor and read this riveting dialogue:

And now, what you need to understand in order to understand は (wa):

"Serena Williams (tennis match) yesterday" is the contextual backdrop that binds all eight of those sentences together. While it's only actually in the first sentence, it is nevertheless an integral part of all of the other sentences—it's what connects them.

With this in mind, you might think of the topic as being "above" an individual sentence. It's kind of like a spotlight, or a billboard, or anything else you can imagine that "focuses" the conversation on something.

Or, simply put:

And with that very simple definition in mind, look at these two Japanese sentences:

And ask yourself: Why doesn't the word "お寿司" need to be in the second sentence?

It's because "sushi" has already been established as the topic of conversation!

You know we're talking about sushi, and not pizza or raw spaghetti noodles, because お寿司 has been marked with the particle は. This took お寿司 from being merely an element one sentence—the thing that is related to 好きですか—and elevated it being the topic of the conversation—the context that ties a group of sentences together. It's thus already clear that the comment "I like" pertains to "sushi", so there's no need to redundantly mention "sushi" again.

† While English requires us to point back to the topic by saying "I like it", Japanese makes no such imposition. The word "it" does not exist in the Japanese sentence. It literally just says "I like".

Why "topicalization" causes confusion

As we said up above, binding particles bind to other words/particles: there was an original particle, which was doing its own thing, and then は "binded" to it, giving it some additional nuance.

Shown below, this "binding" process has some important implications on Japanese grammar:

What this chart is showing is how は "binds" to some of Japanese's case-marking particles:

And, if I had to guess, I'd say that this is why people get confused about が (ga) and は (wa):

So は is not marking a subject... but it looks like it is, because the が it's attached to is invisible.

The key difference between は (wa) and basically every other particle, including が (ga)

To boil the above two sections down into a couple sentences:

Or, to be more specific:

Putting subjects and topics together

The last piece of the puzzle is that the topic and subject of a sentence can overlap, but they don't have to:

To put all that together, consider this sentence:

As such, you might translate this sentence in a few ways, ranging from more literal to more natural:

And now a kind of ridiculous side-by-side of "topics" and "everything else"

Imagine that you're playing some party game where there are a bunch of people standing in a circle, and they take turns running into the middle of a circle, writing something on a white board, and then holding the white board up. Everybody looks to see what is written and then writes whatever the first thing that comes to their mind is.

Here's my depiction of such a scene:

The word giraffe (キリン) isn't in any of those sentences, but all of them are about giraffes. That's the power of は (wa).

When to use は (wa) in a sentence

While there are certain phrases and grammar points that use は (wa), there are six main situations in which you can meaningfully choose to use は (wa) over が (ga) in a sentence.

I`ve condensed this section from about a dozen different Japanese resources, but the two most helpful ones were a textbook for Japanese teachers and a handout from Nagano university. If you're at an ~intermediate level of Japanese, feel free to go through them! They're wonderful.

You'll notice that some of these categories overlap, or that you could seemingly justifiably choose both が (ga) and は (wa) in some sentences. This isn't a clean cut science: が (ga) or は (wa) can often both correctly complete a sentence, they just bring a different nuance.

Use は (wa) to reference already-mentioned information

As a native English speaker, this one will be intuitive for you. We have the exact same rule with "a" and "the":

In the exact same way as "the", the particle は (wa) is used in Japanese to refer back to things you have already mentioned.

For example:

Notice how は (wa) is not used until the second sentence. Once we've established that the old man and woman exist, we can then begin using は (wa) to refer to them.

Here's one more sentence that demonstrates the same logic:

Or, to phrase this a bit differently, consider this sentence:

Similarly, you'll use は to make statements of common sense or everyday knowledge: stuff that is (or should presumably be) "old" information for everybody:

Use は (wa) when making judgments

If you encounter (see, hear, feel, etc.) something and cast judgment upon it or somehow interpret it, use the particle は (wa) to introduce these judgments. While the word "judgment" is somewhat strong in English, the point here is just that the statement you are making is somehow rooted in your own subjective perspective—what you've just said may not be true from someone else's perspective.

Notice how the following statements are all things that you could disagree with:

Use は (wa) to introduce contrast into a statement

Look at this sentence for a second, and think about how you'd interpret it:

This sentence is really saying two things:

In linguistics, this is called contrast—and, in Japanese, you use は (wa) to imbue a sentence with this kind of contrast.

The reason for this contrast becomes a bit more clear when we see the other half of the sentence:

So, as you can see here, we've first established ourselves as the topic and made a comment that applies to ourselves, then quickly changed the topic to something else and made the inverse of the sme comment.

Here's two more examples, just for good measure:

Use は (wa) to note a characteristic of something

When you are saying that one thing is a characteristic, attribute, or part of another thing, use は (wa) to connect the owner and attribute. The definition of "owner" and "attribute" is quite loose, but what we mean here is in situations like "all thumbs are fingers, but not all fingers are thumbs"—where A=B is true, but B=A is not necessarily true.

For example:

The same thing goes for talking about qualities of people:

The same thing goes for talking about qualities of people:

Use は (wa) to introduce something that applies to the entire sentence

Like most things in life, sentences can come in simpler or more complex forms. When sentences get complex enough to contain multiple parts, we describe them as having clauses: the "main" clause is the part of the sentence that could be cut off and turned into an independent sentence, while the the "subordinate" clause is the part of the sentence that would no longer be a complete sentence if cut off and left by itself.

Anyway—attach は (wa) to the thing in the beginning of the sentence that is related to the sentence's verb.

Use は (wa) to make negative ("not/don't ___") statements

While there are a number of exceptions to this, especially in more complex sentences, you'll generally use は (wa) with negative sentences. (Note: "negative" not as in "bad", but as in "is not" or "does not".)

A few examples:

When to use が (ga) in a sentence

Here are six situations where the decision to use が (ga) over は (wa) in a sentence is meaningful. These six points are all counterpoints to the above six points introduced for は (wa), so you may wish to review them in tandem.

Again, note that the point of this article is specifically to contrast the usage of が (ga) and は (wa). There are a number of grammar points and phrases that call for が (ga), but we won't be covering them because you wouldn't use は (wa) in those situations. For a thorough list of grammatical structures where が (ga) is used, refer to the が (ga) section of our master post on Japanese particles.

Use が (ga) to introduce new information into a conversation

In English, we use "a" to introduce new information into a conversation. In exactly the same way, Japanese uses が (ga) for this purpose.

Consider the same two example sentences from the は (wa) section above:

And notice how が (ga) is used the first time the old couple and the bear are mentioned, but how は (wa) is used when they are mentioned for a second time.

Similarly, we can invert our example sentence about the teacher:

Now, kind of a fun one—using what we've said so far, take a stab at this sentence:

Use が (ga) when making observations

Whereas the sentences in the above section somehow involved the speaker's personal opinion, replacing the は (wa) with が (ga) makes them feel more objective: as if you're simply recording events as they unfold.

Use が (ga) to point a finger / pick something out of a group / make an exclusive statement

I wrote a few sentences trying to separate "exclusive が (ga)" from "contrastive は (wa)", but I kept getting tripped up on a certain point: isn't singling one thing out the samae as separating it from literally everything else, which is a form of contrast?

So, instead of reading those failed explanations, please observe these two memes I found on a subreddit I won't name on this family-friendly website:

Of all the places lightning could have struck, the forces that be picked that one specific guy's couch.

Similarly, the above sentiment is directed at one single person in particular:

The point here isn't the other rooms the lightning could have stricken, but the one very specific room it did strike. Similarly, we don't care about all the men Nicole Kidman is happy to not have in her life—every lumen of joy beaming from her rosy cheeks in this photograph is directed very, very specifically at Tom Cruise.

So anyway, when you want to raise one thing on a podium to the exclusion of everything else—to reach into a box of a hundred plushies and say you want this one in particular—you use が (ga) to do that.

Observe:

Now that we've established this point, let's look at the same sentence from up above in the "use が (ga) for new information" section:

Use が (ga)... or は (wa)... to equate two things

Whereas は (wa) is used for one-way relationships (situations where A=B, but B=/=A), が (ga) is used when you can equate things in a two-way fashion (A=B and B=A.)

To give a couple classic examples of this, consider:

(Note: You can also optionally use は (wa) for two-way relationships, but I've chosen to attribute it to が (ga), just to keep the sections separate.)

Use が (ga) to introduce something modifies something within a sentence, but not the entire sentence

This section is tied very closely to は (wa) section above, in which we said は (wa) attaches to the part of a complex sentence that could form a complete sentence in and of itself.

Conversely, attach が (ga) to the thing that is only related to part of a sentence—often something that is adding description to a noun.

As we can see in those same two sentences from above:

Use が (ga) with question words

If you use a question word in a sentence, and it doesn't come before だ・です, attach が (ga) to the question word.

For example:

Already read like six articles but still don't get the difference between は (wa) が (ga)?

That's OK.

To be totally honest, I started studying Japanese in 2014 and have passed the JLPT N1, the highest-level proficiency level test of Japanese, but I couldn't have written this article off the top of my head. Knowing stuff about a language isn't the same as understanding the language. If that seems weird—did you know that English adjectives have a fixed order they're required to go in?

Weird, huh? It blew my mind when I learned that.

Basically, what I want to say is that you don't need to memorize all of this information.

The real way to make progress in Japanese is simply by spending time interacting with it—reading books, watching anime, having conversations, and stuff like that. This should make intuitive sense: it's how you learned your native language, and you speak that language pretty well!

The reason that spending time with Japanese (which we call getting "input") is so important is that, when you do so, you will inevitably run into tons of sentences that include は (wa) and が (ga)—such as this one below:

And, over time, as you see more and more sentences that include は (wa) and が (ga), it'll just kind of sink in. You'll develop an intuitive feel for how these particles work and what sort of nuance they lend to a sentence.

If this is the first time you're hearing about this approach to learning languages, we've actually got an entire guide to learning Japanese with netflix.

Go check that out and try Migaku—it's totally free for 10 days, and you don't need to give us your your credit card information or anythig like that 💪

Of course, if you're still a beginner, go ahead and study は (wa) and が (ga) formally! Just know that, eventually, to consolidate that knowledge, at some point you're going to want to start spending time doing things in Japanese. (Migaku actually has a really solid Japanese course, by the way. Alternatively, we've also compiled a list of the best Japanese textbooks for beginners.)

Conclusion

は (wa) and が (ga) can get pretty complex, but pretty much all of their usages boil down to the same essential two points:

So long as you get that, it's OK. You'll gradually work out the details, over time, as you spend more time interacting with Japanese media.