Day Three: Wa

Wa-t the Heck  

As was mentioned the previous day, Japanese doesn’t have spaces between each of the words. Instead, words are divided and marked with particles. Particles are similar to words, except that they don’t have meaning inherit in themselves alone. They are only written in Hiragana and mark certain parts of speech; they can function as modifiers, connecters, and markers within just about every Japanese sentence. From this point on we will approach Japanese like a puzzle, and we will use these particles as keys to understand how all the pieces fit in Japanese sentences. 

The first and most important particle is Wa/は. Wa marks the topic of the sentence. That is what you are talking about. In other words, the most important thing in the sentence. 

Now your first thought after seeing ‘wa’ is probably that は the symbol for ‘ha’ not ‘wa’ – and you would be right. However, this is one of two Hiragana that have alternate sounds. When ‘は’ is used as a particle it is pronounced ‘wa’. The best indicator we have to differentiate whether it is ‘wa’ or ‘ha’ is to check its location and function within the sentence. If は is found within a word, it is most likely pronounced ‘ha’, if it is found outside of a word or between two words it’s most likely pronounced ‘wa’. Particles follow that which they are marking. So, は can be more easily identified as a particle when you see it following a noun or phrase. 

[Particle] は (wa) is one of the most fundamental particles in Japanese. It is used for a few different purposes, but it is primarily used to introduce or identify a topic in a sentence. It is important to note that the は and preceeding subject/topic can be excluded from a sentence, however, they are only omitted when those in the conversation already know what the topic of the conversation is. This is extremely common in Japanese. (Almost never happens in English.) This can be quite confusing, but probably the best advice to beginners is to try to catch the topic of the sentence at the beginning of the conversation (or paragraph in writing), and unless the topic is reestablished or changed by another は the topic will remain the same. 

In a SOV (Subject -> Object -> Verb) language the は particle marks the main subject (S) or topic of the sentence. (The subject can also be marked by Ga/が, but we’ll get into that later.) 

Another important point to note is that は cannot be used in sentences following “WH” question words… (“Who?” “What?” “When?” “Where?” “Why?” and “How?”). The list is more expansive in Japanese, so all “WH” question words will not be listed here. However, a few of these are: 誰(dare), 何 (nani), いつ (itsu), なぜ (naze), and どうやって (douyatte). 

は is almost always at the beginning of the sentence, and will mark the most important part of the sentence.