Particle が
 

Hi,

I am having troubling understanding the usage of particle "ga", e.g in the following example:

ドアが閉しまります！
Doa ga shimarimasu!

Can't I say "doa wa shimarimasu" meaning something like: as for the door, it is closing.

My confusion is: ga is used to introduce something new. But the door is there, it exists, and it is about to be closed. So why use ga?

>ドアが閉しまります！ wrong
　ドアが閉まります! correct

"ドアが閉まります： DOA GA SHIMARI-MASU;The door will close"
You might think this translation is strange in use of "close" but door close by itself in Japan.

In this case, "GA" simply indicates the subject of the sentence.

"ドアは閉まります:DOA WA SHIMARI-MASU; as for the door, it is gong to close(or to be closed)." sound strange because "WA" implies some comparison. Whe you say "MIGI NO DOA WA SHIMARI MASU:The right side door will be closed" will make sense.

>ga is used to introduce something new.

I cannot accept this definition. Do you have any example?

Yes, here:
The Particle Wa I -

The topic is, thus, “old information.” In order for something to be registered information, though, you may need to use ga が first to establish it. Essentially, information needs to be new before it can be grammatically treated as old information.

Mukashi mukashi, aru tokoro ni, ojiisan to obāsan ga sunde imashita. Ojiisan wa yama e shibakari ni, obāsan wa kawa e sentaku ni ikimashita.

This sentence is the opening to one of the most important fairy-tales of Japan, Momotarō 桃太郎. At the beginning, the reader doesn't know anything about the story. This is why the particle ga が is used to mark the subject. Once the characters are established, they are then treated as the topic in the following sentence, thus marked by wa は.

Or is it possible that definition is not exactly correct? I am struggling so much with wa/ga particles... :/

thank you so much for your help!!

The ga particle can be used to introduce new subjects as an emphasis when introducing it to the conversation.

So, if in English you were talking about who left the toilet seat up and you are talking about two people, but finally someone says, GREG was the one who left the toilet seat up, you can see the emphasis on GREG and his name is new to the conversation.

I hope I didn't muddle that up.

Thank you, that was very helpful! And your Greg-example is really cool ;)

But I don't understand why "ga" is used in the example with the door... You don't want to say "It is this door which will close"

Does "GA" introduce something new to listener ?

Yes, sometimes GA introduce new thing like "OJIISAN TO OBAASAN GA IMASHITA". But I think it is not always true.

In "Door GA SHIMARIMASU", the door is not new for the listeners.

In Microsoft WIndows, sometime it says "XXXX WA loginSHITE-IMASU." which is not natural for me. I think it should be "XXXX GA login SHITE-IMASU.".

"GA" is difficult subject to discuss on. There are many types of "GA" used in Japanese like "SORE GA WATASHI NO IITAI KOTO DESU:it is what I want to say.", "WATASHI WA ANATA GA SUKI-DESU; I like you." etc.

In the japanese dictionary, "GA" is explained very in detail.

Thank you so much for the example with Windows :)

Yeah it is difficult, I am really struggling with it. I hope that it will come naturally with time... and I'm sorry, I cannot read that many kanji to understand what is written in the dictionary. Anyway, thanks for your help.

By the picture, I just wanted to show you how they spend their dictioanry space to explain "GA".

And sorry to say, I did not read the linkyou provided yet.

In this movie, "GA" is referred as "to be used with the first appeared subject". (not always, GA can be also used another way)



But in this case of "SHOGI WA chess NO YOU-NA game DESU", WA(HA) is used with firstly referred subject "SHOGI" to explain the new word "SHOGI".

There are the cases that "GA" is used with the first appeared subject (not always) and also there are the cases that "WA/HA" is used with the first appeared subject.

Then, I do not understand why only "GA" is referred to use with the first appeared subject.

I think "GA with the first appeared subject" is easy to understand only for native English speakers for some reason I do not understand.

So you mean, the guy in the video is kind of wrong? Could you give me an example where は would be used to introduce new information?

Btw. English is not my native language. I:o

Still the difference between は/が is pretty vague to me. I hope if I watch/read/hear a lot of Japanese, I will get the "feeling" on how to use it correctly.

>So you mean, the guy in the video is kind of wrong?

No, I don't mean he is wrong. It would be make sense for non-Japanese.

He says "GA" is used to refer to something "first time in the conversation". I have not such point of view. It is new to me.

In the movie, he explained "introducing new thing" as one functionality of "GA". It is acceptable for me.

>Could you give me an example where は would be used to introduce new information?

Does "将棋はチェスに似たボードゲームです:SHOGI WA chess NI NITA board game DESU" not work?

Or, how about "'ODORU SAM'MA GOTEN' is a name of a Japanese TV show" ?

As he mentioned in the movie at 14:00, "GA" is used to mark the subject. But it is confusing that there are three class of "GA": as a conjunction (DAGA, SORE WA MACHIGAI DA), as the subject marker (SORE GA MONDAI NANO DA) and the object marker (WATASHI WA SOBA GA SUKI DA). I can not explain this issue in smart manner.

Thanks for the examples. You are right, は can obviously be used to introduce something new as well.

As for the 3 different が:
1. Conjunction: yeah it is a bit confusing, but we have to live with the fact that the subject marker and the conjunction coincide in form. There are also words like these in other languages as well. For example, the word "general". It can mean "general" as a rank in the army, or "general" in the meaning of 一般に or maybe 大抵.

2 and 3: I always think of the が used after an object like of a subject :) e.g.

私はそばが好きだ。
I try to think of this sentence not as "I like soba" but "As for me, soba is desirable". In this case soba is the subject of the sentence. :D

>私はそばが好きだ。
>In this case soba is the subject of the sentence.

If "SOBA" is the subject, then do you mean "SOBA likes something"?

No, I mean "soba is desirable/likable". Since from the grammatical point of view "好き" is an adjective.

Then "soba" would be the subject and "is desirable" would be the predicate. :)

Another example: the weather is nice. The sky is blue. Soba is likable.

Or 車がほしい　- of course you can translate it as "I want a car", then the grammatical function of "car" would be an object. But I prefer to think of it as "the car is desirable". In this case "car" is a subject.

>No, I mean "soba is desirable/likable". Since from the grammatical point of view "好き" is an adjective.

In the case of "私には蕎麦が好ましい:WATASHI NIWA SOBA-GA KONOMASHII", "好ましい:KONOMASHII" is an adjective.

I saw this kind of opinion before. But I can not accept "好き:SUKI;like" as an adjective.

Or, "好き:SUKI;like" could have the characteristic to have the objective with "GA".

I'm still confusing about this kind of use for "GA". I just keep using "GA" like as other Japanese use.

Hmmm well have you heard about 2 types of adjectives: い - adjectives and な-adjectives?
やさしい人です。
好きな料理です。

If you believe me or not, suki is an adjective. Here is a great japanese online dictionary:

suki - Jisho.org

As you can see, it is a noun and a na-adjective. By the way, you can translate here all those grammatical terms you know in japanese into English :) But I know you are a native speaker. You just speak, you don't really think WHY you speak like this. It is natural to you :)

>Hmmm well have you heard about 2 types of adjectives: い - adjectives and な-adjectives?

Yes, I know. it depends on each adjective.

>If you believe me or not, suki is an adjective. Here is a great japanese online dictionary:

I understand "好きだ：SUKI-DA" or "好きです：SUKI-DESU" is "verb clause" which works as a verb like "like".

Then what? Sorry, I have no time to post which follows that right now.