The は Particle

Introduction

The time has come for me to give your very first particle, は! After this lesson, you can start making your own complete sentences! How amazing!!!—alright, alright, I'll calm down. Sorry, I shouldn’t have had that extra cup of coffee.

So, tiny review first. Particles are parts of speech in the Japanese language that attach to a word or phrase to signify what role they have in grammar. In other words, particles are what we use to "mark" words in a sentence, assigning them a specific part to play. Is it describing an action? Is it telling us where a verb is taking place? Or is it telling us who is doing said verb? Particles will be the ones to let you know.

For your first particle, it'll be all about marking a topic.

The は Particle as a Topic Marker

Structure

• 

  Topicは
  Example:
  → 彼かれはカッコいいです。
  ”He is cool.”

First things first: although this particle uses the hiragana character は which we normally read as /ha/, it’s always read as /wa/ when used as a particle. Neat!

As for what it does in a sentence, the header up there pretty much speaks for itself! We use the は particle to mark the topic of a sentence. So whenever you see は, you know that whatever comes before it is the topic of the sentence. It's as if we're letting the person know, "hey, I’m going to say something about this", wherein "this" is the word or phrase marked by は.

Here's a quick example to let you see this in action:

Whatever comes before は is what we consider "marked". 「私わたし」 is what は is marking, so clearly, the topic here is "I", the person who's speaking. Of course, it doesn't have to just be about people. It can be about food, your pet alpaca, or even that dream you had last week about bears dancing to disco music (epic!). That’s right, the topic of your sentence can be… anything! Let's see another example.

For this sentence, I bet you already know what the topic is! Of course, 「日本語にほんご」. Simple enough, right? If you ever get lost though and forget what は does, just ask yourself, "What is the sentence talking about? What's the topic?"

は, The Topic Changer

Now that we know は is a topic marker, does that mean we have to use it in every single sentence? If we don't, would no one know what we're talking about? Well, here's where the magic of context comes into play again!

You've already heard about this in your previous lessons but just in case, let me bring it up again. In Japanese, when the topic is already obvious, it's perfectly fine to not mention it anymore. And be careful! Because if you don’t do this, a lot of the time you’ll end up sounding redundant. I'll extend Sam's introduction so you can see this in action.

Just by omitting 「私わたしは」 for the next couple of sentences, Sam was able to avoid sounding unnecessarily repetitive while still being completely clear about who he was referring to! After all, in this context, it's an introduction of Sam and no one else. It was clear that the only shy Canadian he could be talking about was himself.

So, does this mean we only use は once? Well, not exactly. We can totally use it again, and we’ll do this when we want to stop talking about our current topic and bring up a new one instead. By doing this, we're basically saying, "Hey dude, I'm not talking about the previous topic anymore, I'm talking about this now."

Here, let's say we're telling someone what foods we like and why we like them:

First, we mentioned salad and talked about how delicious and healthy it is. Then when we wanted to talk about a different dish, we used the は particle again to neatly separate the two. This way, we were able to talk about steak and salad back-to-back without confusing anyone!

Steak and salad aside, we’ve finished our lesson for today! As simple as that, you can clearly define what you're talking about, as well as indicate when you're starting to talk about something else. And it’s all done with the handy は particle! I don't know about you, but I think it's a pretty cool particle to have as your first! If you want to stretch your new knowledge muscles, I'll leave you with a few more examples to read.

More Example Sentences

Summary

• 

  The は particle is called "the topic particle" because it marks the topic of a sentence.

• 

  Whatever comes before the は particle is the word or phrase being marked as the "topic" of the sentence.

• 

  This isn't limited to only people! You can use the は particle for any noun, as long as it is the topic of the sentence.

• 

  When the topic is already clear, you are free to omit the は particle, and what it’s marking, entirely.

• 

  When you want to change the topic or move on to talk about something else, use the は particle to indicate the new topic you want to bring up.