One of my biggest pet peeves in the field of Japanese as a second language is the \u300c\u304c\u300d particle being called the “subject particle”. This misleading terminology comes from my second biggest pet peeve, which is educators trying to artificially tie Japanese into English language concepts. I think one of the problems is that Japanese teachers, especially native speakers, really don’t understand their own language from a conceptual point-of-view and more importantly how it logically differs from English.<\/p>\n
I can illustrate how stupid<\/i> it is to call \u300c\u304c\u300d the subject particle in the following simple dialogue.<\/p>\n \n\uff21\u3055\u3093\uff1a \u539f\u5bbf\u306b\u884c\u3053\u3046\u3088\u3002 Looking at the last sentence, if \u300c\u30af\u30ec\u30fc\u30d7\u304c\u300d is indeed marking crepe as the subject, we can only assume that \uff21\u3055\u3093 wants to go to Harajuku because the crepe wants to eat. But that doesn’t make any sense! In reality, \u300c\u30af\u30ec\u30fc\u30d7\u300d here is supposed to be the object of the sentence, the subject being \uff21\u3055\u3093, who wants to eat crepe.<\/p>\n The most simple conclusion, if you insist on thinking in English, is that the \u300c\u304c\u300d particle can either represent the subject or the object of the sentence. But why would you use the same particle to represent something completely so different as the subject and the object? And to make things even worse, consider the following dialogue.<\/p>\n \n\uff21\u3055\u3093\uff1a\u4f55\u304b\u98df\u3079\u3088\u3046\u3088\u3002 If you throw in the fact that the \u300c\u306f\u300d can also be the subject OR the object, it’s no wonder that Japanese particles seem so confusing! It’s natural that students can never figure out the difference between \u300c\u306f\u300d and \u300c\u304c\u300d because it seems that either can be used to indicate the same things in English. This is where Japanese teachers should really beat into their heads that the concepts they’re looking for such as the subject does not exist<\/i> in Japanese.<\/p>\n The subject traditionally indicates who or what is doing the verb in the sentence but \u300c\u306f\u300d only indicates the topic. For example, \u300c\u4eca\u65e5\u306f\u5fd9\u3057\u3044\u300d doesn’t mean that “Today is busy”, it means “As for today, [I, he, she, we, they] is\/are busy.” Only when we translate into English are we forced to create the subject by context. In this case, the translation might be “I’m busy today.”<\/p>\n The \u300c\u304c\u300d particle also does not indicate the subject, it only identifies the unknown. For example, \u300c\u30af\u30ec\u30fc\u30d7\u304c\u98df\u3079\u305f\u3044\u304b\u3089\u3002\u300d is identifying that it’s because crepe is the thing that he\/she\/we\/they wants to eat. In English, the subject would be “it” as in, “It’s<\/u> because I want to eat crepe”. But because Japanese doesn’t even have a subject, there is no need for such a construction.<\/p>\n This is why I’ve been calling the \u300c\u304c\u300d particle the “identifier particle” for the longest time, and you should too because that’s what it does. There is no such thing as a subject in Japanese so it makes no sense to have a “subject” particle. (Please feel free to do the double quote sign while saying “subject” in “subject particle”.)<\/p>\n For further reading, I highly suggest this blog post: \u300c\u65e5\u672c\u8a9e\u306b\u4e3b\u8a9e\u306f\u3042\u308b\u306e\u304b\uff1f<\/a>\u300d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of my biggest pet peeves in the field of Japanese as a second language is the \u300c\u304c\u300d particle being called the “subject particle”. This misleading terminology comes from my second biggest pet peeve, which is educators trying to artificially … Continue reading
\n\uff22\u3055\u3093\uff1a \u306a\u3093\u3067\uff1f
\n\uff21\u3055\u3093\uff1a\u3000\u30af\u30ec\u30fc\u30d7\u304c<\/b>\u98df\u3079\u305f\u3044\u304b\u3089\u3002\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n\uff22\u3055\u3093\uff1a\u30af\u30ec\u30fc\u30d7\u306f\u3069\u3046\uff1f
\n\uff21\u3055\u3093\uff1a\u30af\u30ec\u30fc\u30d7\u306f<\/b>\u3042\u307e\u308a\u98df\u3079\u305f\u304f\u306a\u3044\u306a\u3002\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n