Japanese sentences don’t rely on strict word order to tell you who is doing what to whom. Instead, short suffixes called particles ( 助詞 , joshi) attach to the end of words to mark their role in the sentence.
The pair that trips up almost every learner first is は (wa) and が (ga):
- は (wa) sets the topic (“As for…”): Written with the hiragana character ha (は) but pronounced wa when used as a particle, it frames what the sentence is about—something both speaker and listener can already picture.
- が (ga) spotlights the grammatical subject or new information: It marks what actually exists, happens, or answers a “who/what?” question. With verbs of existence like います (imasu, for living things) and あります (arimasu, for inanimate things), the person or thing that exists is marked with が.
Take a common pattern when introducing family:
- First, set the person you are talking about as the topic with は (“As for Keisuke…”).
- Next, introduce the sibling who exists using が + います ("…a younger sister exists / he has a younger sister").
- Once that younger sister is on the stage, her name becomes the new topic—marked with は.
Try it in a sentence#
Click each blank (____) below to choose は or が, then press check:
けいすけくん
Next steps in Japanese:
- Try typing in Japanese to see how romaji turns into hiragana and kanji on a regular keyboard.
- Explore the map of kanji to break characters like 妹 (younger sister: 女 + 未) and 名 (name: 夕 + 口) into their components.