Page 90 - Basic Japanese

Anata wa Nihon no anime ga suki desu ka.

Do you like Japanese anime?

Anata wa Nihon no anime wa suki desu ka.
Do you LIKE Japanese anime?

Because the difference in meaning between wa and ga is

largely one of emphasis, you can often take a sentence and
change the emphasis just by substituting wa for ga. The

particle wa can be thought of us an “attention-shifter”: the
words preceding it set the stage for the sentence, and serve

as scenery and background for what we are going to say.
This can lead to ambiguity. The sentence Tarō wa Hanako ga

suki desu (literally, ‘Taro as topic, Hanako as emphatic
subject, someone is liked’) can mean either ‘Taro likes

Hanako’ (It’s HANAKO that Taro likes’) or ‘Hanako likes Taro’
(It’s HANAKO that likes Taro). The situation usually makes it

clear which meaning is called for. If you have both wa and ga
in a sentence, the phrase with wa usually comes first: the

stage is set before the comment is made.
Sometimes two topics are put in contrast with each

other: Kore wa eigakan desu ga, sore wa ginkō desu ‘This is a

movie-theater, but that is a bank.’ (The particle ga meaning
‘but’ is not the same particle as the one indicating the

subject.) In this case, the emphasis is on the way in which
the two topics contrast—in being a theater on the one hand,

and a bank on the other.

2.9. ka