what does "ga" mean?

[Vision]

Hey guys,

I noticed that after alot of things, people use the word "ga" in place of the word "wa". What does this mean?

[seanolan]

The simplest answer is, "ga" is the subject marker, "wa" is the topic marker. "Wa" can be used in place of "ga", "wo", or "ni" (and others I believe) to lend emphasis to the noun or noun phrase preceding it. In many cases, "wa" replaces "ga" because, as in English, most often the subject is also the topic. But it can also replace "wo", making the direct object the topic, or "ni" making the indirect object the topic, or even "de" which in many cases would be a prepositional phrase in English. For instance:

Sensei ga boku ni koukou de purezento wo kuremashita.
The teacher gave me a present at school.

Wa will change the emphasis of this sentence, depending on its location, but not its meaning.

Sensei wa boku ni koukou de purezento wo kuremashita.
The teacher [that we have been speaking of] gave me a present at school.

Sensei ga boku wa koukou de purezento wo kuremashita.
The teacher gave me [as opposed to someone else] a present at school.

Sensei ga boku ni koukou dewa purezento wo kuremashita.
The teacher gave me a present at school [and not somewhere else]. {notice de becomes dewa instead of wa, because it sounds more natural. There's probably a real gramatical reason for that, but I don't know it}

Sensei ga boku ni koukou de purezento wa kuremashita.
The teacher gave me a present [the present we have previously mentioned; THE present] at school.

Not to mention the myriad other used of both wa and ga in other functions.

This is my understanding of it...perhaps someone else can clarify or correct any mistakes or unclear parts of my explanation.

Sean

[dmr214]

Hi,
If GA comes at the end of a sentence and there is an adjoining sentence it can mean "but". It's more formal than kedo, keredomo and others.

Of course everything that seanloan said is also true so you just need to pay attention to where it is in the sentence.