が

About

Often called the "subject" marker, が is one of the main Japanese particles. However, since the Japanese grammatical subject is not the same as the English grammatical subject, it is more useful to simply think of が as attaching to a part of speech that is about to have something said about it. In many cases, what が attaches to does end up being the subject of the sentence, but this is not always the case.

Since が emphasizes whatever it attaches to, we can think of it as "pointing" at that word. Because of this, on MaruMori, we sometimes refer to the が particle as the "pointer particle".

Also, because が emphasizes the word it attaches to, it is often used in scenarios where new information is being presented, or in conjunction with question words such as "who", "when", and "where" (e.g. 「誰だれが行いきましたか。」"Who went?" / 「マイクが行いきました。」"Mike went.").

Summary

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  が is a "pointer" particle, that emphasizes whatever it attaches to.

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  が often marks the subject of an upcoming verb or adjective.

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  が is often used when new information is being discussed or with question words.