Grammar Guide: Difference between が and は preceded by a subject

Language Specific Japanese
#1

As a native Japanese speaker, I often find many Japanese learners being so much confused with the difference between particle が and は. Some learners highly recommend Tae Kim’s Japanese Grammar Website. But his article about が and は isn’t so good, unfortunately. (Note: I’m not denying all of his articles because I haven’t read through them all yet.)

From different points of view, I explained about the difference on several pages including on external websites. Let me compile them here as an alternative guide for you.

Nutshell:
が is for a vertical comparison whereas は is for a horizontal comparison when they are preceded by a subject.
→ Read this discussion first.

Example sentences with explanation:

  1. What’s the difference between この鍋は鉄でできています and この鍋が鉄でできています (both means “this pot is made from iron”)? answered on HiNative
  2. What’s the difference between 私は毎日、部屋の掃除をします and 私が毎日、部屋の掃除をします (both means “I clean up the room(s) everyday”)? answered on the same page of the first case.
  3. What’s the difference between 我が社では車を作ります and 我が社が車を作ります (both means "our company makes cars)? answered on HiNative – Hint: it’s a looooong series of threads. Jump to my answer posted on Feb 9, 2021.
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#2

Thanks this is really helpful. One question, I’m going through the new fluency fast track and reporting sentences as I come across them but I’ve noticed a couple of times in the audio は as a topic particle gets pronounced “ha” instead of “wa”. As a native speaker do you know if it is ever pronounced “ha” when used as a topic particle, perhaps in certain regions?

#3

@CrimsonGrass2492

We never pronounce particle は as “HA”. This rule is applied to any usages of particle は (i.e. including using particle は to indicate an object.) There is no variation of pronunciation by regional dialects.

I couldn’t quickly find the page and my memory might not be correct, but someone probably reported about a similar case to the forum several years ago. It turned out that it was due to the person’s browser, not the fundamental issue caused by the TTS. Which browser do you use?

I played ~200 sentences in the New Fluency Fast Track (FFT), but I’ve never encountered the Clozemaster’s TTS pronouncing particle は as “HA” so far. I played them on my Windows laptop with Chrome.

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#4

I thought so thanks so much for your reply. I’m solely using the iOS app with Clozemaster audio selected and the TTS is very good/convincing! (Though it may just sound better to me due to it not being my native tongue) I also couldn’t find anything online outright denying that use case so it had me going for a bit haha. I’m close to getting through the first thousand in the new fast track and this has popped up a couple of times just in the last few hundred sentences.

#5

@CrimsonGrass2492
I haven’t tried the iOS app’s TTS for the Japanese from English course yet. But the app uses Apple’s three Siri voices, not the Clozemaster original one. You may encounter more pronunciation errors due to the Siri TTS voices.

So far, I played

  • 90 sentences in the NFFT Level 5
  • 100 sentences in the NFFT Level 10
  • ~1,000 sentences in the traditional Most Common Words Collections (approx. 100 sentences for each level)

The error rate of TTS in MCWC is 5.2%. See the stats here.

The error rate of TTS in NFFT is 3.2% (6 cases out of 190 sentences), most of which put an accent on a wrong syllable.

I don’t know whether you regard these numbers high or low. But please always keep in mind that the TTS has some flaws in Japanese.

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