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Yamada, some things you’ll want to take away from this. One is the usage of ではありません vs. じゃありません. They essentially mean the same thing, but ではありません is used for writing and is a bit formal whereas じゃありません is more for speaking and is a slight contraction of ではありません. And if you want to avoid sounding textbookish in your speaking, don’t say ではありません.
As for using が or は、that again just comes down to the classic of where you want to put your emphasis. I could see making cases for either way.
O.k., I know が and は are super crazy in that it is very difficult to explain them fully, but could someone clarify what should be used in a sentence I wrote on Lang-8?
My sentence: “春の雨が好きじゃありません。”First corrector: “春の雨が好きではありません。”
I would say this is a valid correction. When writing ではありません is used, じゃありません is typically used only in speech.
However ではありません is polite form, which when used with a na-adjective like 好き in a diary / journal entry you don’t need to be polite, it is more natural to use the negative plain form of the copula ではない (with the spoken version じゃない) If you have no idea what i’m on about, you can probably ignore all that :)
Second corrector: “春の雨は
が好きじゃありません。”The second corrector has は and the first corrector has が
Is it just a matter of preference? (Does not が identify ‘Spring’ (はる/春)?)Its not so much a matter of preference but a matter of meaning.
Using が is saying specifically rain in spring is what you don’t like and it implies perhaps there are rains in other seasons you do like. Using は puts the emphasis on the disliking there isn’t really any strong implications as you would get withが. In Such a simple sentence there is really no issue with は or が.
As far as a correction its a matter of what you are trying to say, either は or が are valid in this sentence, context would probably be important as well, have you previously talked about the spring rain / weather? If so you would probably topicalize using は as its ‘old information’ kind of thing.
I’d lean towards using が, personally – 雨が好き has an implied 私は on the front.
Perhaps but maybe if you had something like.
This year spring has been very rainy, I don’t like spring rains.
I guess that would be something like.
今年の春は天気がとてもわるい。春の雨は好きではない。
I’m pretty much guessing all that actually, I am really bad at japanese :) Couldn’t figure how to say it had rained a lot this spring so I had to say the weather was bad. :P
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This reply was modified 11 years ago by
vlgi.
Using が is saying specifically rain in spring is what you don’t like and it implies perhaps there are rains in other seasons you do like. Using は puts the emphasis on the disliking there isn’t really any strong implications as you would get withが
が doesn’t really imply anything at all about rain in other seasons. It’s simply identifying that spring rain is what you don’t like.
は on the other hand can imply contrast “as for spring rain, I don’t like it (but I like summer rains)”.
When using wa to contrast two things you need to mention both things.
Wa servers to de-emphasise what it follows.
Ga on the other hand Emphasises what it follows.
The extra emphasis of ga adds the implication.
Its like the example in koichi’s text fugu.
I hate YOUR car.
Ga is used to imply that it is specifically your car i hate not all cars. With the implication that there is something wrong with your car, maybe its dangerous or smelly or something.
I think the moral of this story is: context is important.
Thanks everyone for the responses! ^^
I am actually just starting season 5 for the most part and am being introduced to different conjugations of ending thingies.
As for the meaning I intended, perhaps it was just that I hated the rain (in spring) for that one day…. (context (i.e the whole post): “春の雨が好きじゃありません。コンピュータとＩＰＯＤを濡れました。それはわるいでした。” This is the uncorrected version, as I cannot access the corrected versions now…. But basically I was trying to say that I did not like the rain for today because my computer and iPod got a little wet.)
Perhaps something like, 今日、春の雨は好きではない。毎秒は一世一代。When using wa to contrast two things you need to mention both things.
No, you do not. は is used to imply contrast without stating both elements all the time in Japanese, especially in negative sentences.
The extra emphasis of ga adds the implication.
No, it does not. It picks something out of a list and identifies it as the subject without saying anything about the other possible subjects. The other cars might be just as bad as yours, or they might be better, but it doesn’t imply either way. To imply contrast you replace が with は.
To bring up an often used example, this is why you don’t say: 目はきれいですね to a Japanese girl (you’d use が, otherwise it could be read as implying that her eyes are pretty but the rest of her isn’t).
Here’s another example, it’s a quick story Jay Rubin tells in his book ‘Making Sense of Japanese’ (which has an 18 page article on は vs が that I highly recommend):
I and a few other American scholars were at a party and one of us tried to compliment our Japanese host by saying, 今晩はおいしいものがたくさんありますね。 By this he intended to say, “What a lot of tasty dishes you’re serving us tonight.” The host laughed and remarked, “You mean I’m usually stingy on other nights?”
By putting は after “tonight”, my colleague had in effect said, “Tonight, for a change, you’re serving us a lot of tasty dishes.”
@Elenkis: That’s a funny story :D I never really thought about it that way. Now that’s making me worry about ever using はin case I inadvertently offend someone haha.
When using wa to contrast two things you need to mention both things.
No, you do not. は is used to imply contrast without stating both elements all the time in Japanese, especially in negative sentences.
I suppose that depends on whether you consider contrasting and implying a contrast to be the same thing.
Looks like I didn’t read your post correctly and you didn’t read mine correctly either :P
Gosh people on the internets are such dicks eh?
What did I read incorrectly? Your post about the two particles was mistaken and I was simply correcting that. It’s not a big deal, I just wanted to help you understand their function.
Anyway, in light of the context provided by Yamada, I’d use は for that sentence. As Joel said, it’s just another one of those cases where it depends on context.
I and a few other American scholars were at a party and one of us tried to compliment our Japanese host by saying, 今晩はおいしいものがたくさんありますね。 By this he intended to say, “What a lot of tasty dishes you’re serving us tonight.” The host laughed and remarked, “You mean I’m usually stingy on other nights?”
-_- I think I need to be more careful with my は usage…
AnonymousThink of は as implying “As for this… (I don’t know about the others)” whenever you say something. Think of が as implying “This (in particular out of all possible)…”.
Thinking in this way explains the example above:
“As for tonight (I don’t know about the others) you served a lot of delicious dishes” Implies the speaker can’t be sure it’s always this great, and thus taken like it was.
Also something I’ve come to realize a while ago is that people (me included) tend to think there *must* be a grammar form to construct everything you want to say. When in the case above you could just leave a marker out all together and say 今晩美味しい。。。 Which is perfectly acceptable since it’s quite obvious what you intend as the topic.
A practice question in 完全マスター:
「社長じゃないのに、そんな大切なことを私が決めていいはずがない。」「私が決めていいはずがない」is the part I’m not sure about. Is it something along the lines of “if I’m the one who decides, I don’t expect it will be good”? However, the first part of the whole sentence is “Even though I’m not the company president” (right?), which doesn’t seem to fit together with the second part (if my understanding is correct): surely if you’re not the president, you shouldn’t expect to be good at making important decisions, and so the “even though” should be “because”.
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This reply was modified 11 years ago by
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