Japanese/Grammar/Basic Particles

The Japanese language uses post-position particles (助詞; じょし) to denote the direction of an action and who is performing the action. They consistently come after the word that they modify.

There are three particles used very frequently in the language: は, を and が. This module covers these along with a few other common ones but an exhaustive list would run very long.

The topic and subject markers は and が
The particle "は" (pronounced as "わ" when used as a particle) is the topic marker denoting topic of discussion, while "が" is the subject marker and marks a noun that performs an action. The difference between the two tends to cause confusion among beginners but their usage can be summed up as matter of focus.

The topic particle "は" is used when introducing a topic and gives focus to the action of the sentence (i.e., the verb or the adjective). The subject marker "が" is used when emphasising the subject giving focus to the subject of the action.

One can also think of it as replacing "~は" with the phrase "as for ~", "on the topic of ~" or "regarding ~" to distinguish it from "が". While these phrases aren't common in English we can use these expressions here to better show the main difference between "は" and "が".

The difference can also be displayed by using both subject and topic markers in one sentence: One has to be careful using both "は" and "が" in one sentence. If a verb is actually acting on the (direct) subject, usually a different particle (like を) has to be used.

"は" is generally more flexible, because the "it" can be assumed, and is therefore recommended to novices who have not grasped the difference between the two.

"は" also has the specialized function of being used for comparisons as well.

Often the grammatical subject may also be the topic. In this case, "は" normally replaces "が". However, if the subject is never known, you cannot use "は" and must use "が". This is similar to using pronouns: You can't state, "It is over there", without first stating what "it" may be.

The direct object marker を
The particle "を" (predominantly pronounced "お") is the direct object marker and marks the recipient of an action.

It also indicates the place through which the action occurs:

As with much of the language, parts of a sentence that can be assumed from context are often omitted and the direct object particle is commonly dropped in conversational (colloquial) Japanese. を is commonly used to identify the object in which the verb is affecting. For example, in the sentence "I drink juice" (わたし は ジュース を のむ), を is identifying the word "ジュース" as the object in which のむ ' s action is taking place. "のむ" means "drink / to drink". In simpler terms, を tells us that the word (ジュース) is the object which the verb (のむ) is interacting with.

The indirect object marker に
"に" marks the verb's indirect object (i.e. the destination of a targeted verb action) translating as "to", "in", "at" or "by". It also indicates the location touched or affected by an event or action:

"に" can also be used as an "object of a preposition" marker when found in prepositional phrases like の前に (no mae ni), which means "in front of" or "before" depending on the context of the sentence. The particle "へ" described below is used exclusively for marking the destination.

The destination marker へ
へ (pronounced "え" when used as a particle) indicates the direction of an action, roughly the equivalent of "to" or "toward" in English.

The question marker か
Placing か at the end of a sentence changes a statement into a question. Use it at the end of a verb to make it a question, or at the end of an interrogative pro-form to make it into a demonstrative pronoun.

For more on the question marker, see: ../Sentence ending particles/.

The possessive marker の
"の", is most commonly used as a possessive marker (similar to the English " 's "). The particle can also function as a noun link, indicating that the preceding noun (or adjectival noun) modifies the following noun. It can also be used for nominalisation, converting verbs and (proper) adjectives into nouns. Note that in this last example two particles are used together: の and が: the first makes the action a noun, and the second tells that this action is what the sentence is all about.

The exhaustive list conjunction と
This particle acts as a conjunction on the words it separates. Unlike conjunctions of more than two words in English, where only the last two are separated with an "and" and the rest with commas, the Japanese conjunction separates each word and commas are not used.

This applies to exhaustive lists, i.e. when all objects are explicitly mentioned.

The particle is used to indicate parallelism with the subject, often meaning "with":

The incomplete list marker や
This particle is used to connect various words implying that the listing is not exhaustive. The particle "など" may be added after the list to emphasise that the list is incomplete.

The "also" marker も
も is quite simply a marker that says "also". It replaces the particles は, が and を but can also follow other particles. This can also be used to form a large list of words all acting as though one of the basic particles (は, を, or が) were affecting the whole list.

Worth noting is that used with an interrogative pro-form (e.g. who, where, how) the も particle negates the pro-form:

The means particle で
The particle で can be used in several situations indicating means. These can be for example an instrument, a location or a language.

As a note of interest, the で from the copula である is also actually an instrumental-maker. で marks the whole previous expression instrumental to the verb ある. However, this is the classical meaning of the copula and rarely explicitly treated this way in modern Japanese.

Origin and limit から and まで
These particles indicate the starting point or border of an action. This may be a location as well as a time and corresponds roughly with "from" and "until".