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The Topic-Indicating Particle

The function of "wa" is to indicate the topic of an
utterance or sentence.

kore wa ... "This ..."
kare wa ... "He ..."
kanojo wa ... "She ..."
Tanaka-san wa ... "Tanaka-san ..."
watasi no ie wa ... "My house ..."

The word (or words) coming before the wa is the topic of the sentence, which
will be described or commented on by what comes after wa .

[watasi no ie] wa {chiisai desu.}
my house <---- small is
My house is small.

The part of the sentence in [ ] preceding wa is the topic of the sentence.
The part in { } following wa is a "comment" about the topic.

The topic of a Japanese sentence is often the subject of the sentence, in the
English grammatical sense. But this is not always the case, so it's best to
think of wa as being the topic-indicating structural particle.

Although like all structural particles, wa has no inherent meaning in and of
itself, in terms of designating the topic, you can think of it as acting in
the sense of "As for...":

"(As for) my house, (it) is small."

wa can be used in more than one clause in a sentence, to set off the topic of
each clause. It is often used this way in two clauses that contrast one thing
to another:

Eigo wa muzukashii desu ga, nihongo wa muzukashiku nai desu.
(As for) English (it) is difficult, but (as for) Japanese (it) is not difficult.

English is difficult, but Japanese is not difficult.

Sample Sentences:

Kanojo wa Kanada-jin desu.
She is Canadian.

Karera wa yakyuu no senshu desu.
They are baseball players.

Soto wa samui desu.
(It) is cold outside.

Kare wa Tanaka-san no tomodati desu.
He is Tanaka-san's friend.

Kore wa watasi no atarasii pasokon desu.
This is my new personal computer.

desu, as you probably know, is the all-purpose verb that is
equivalent to the English "am/is/are" (one of the nice little
features that makes Japanese a relatively easy language to
learn!)

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Ken Butler, 1-12-905 Higashi Kanagawa, Kanagawa-ku, Yokohama, Japan 211-0044