Differences Between English and Japanese

Japanese As a Topic-Prominent Language

Where's the Subject?

Sei Shōnagon, one of Japan’s great writers in the Heian Period (794-1185), says in her work, The Pillow Book:

Haru-wa Akebono
春はあけぼの

It’s translated in the English version something like: “How elegant is the dawn“, and I think it’s nicely put. However, here, I’d dare to break down the Japanese original into small chunks to see the sentence’s grammatical structure.

Haru (春): spring (noun)

-wa (は): clitic particle placed after a noun

Akebono (あけぼの): the dawn (noun)

Now, which do you think the subject of the above sentence is? You may deduce it would be either Haru (spring) or Akebono (the dawn) since they are nouns. But, sorry to say, none of them is. There’s no subject there. The sentence doesn’t need the subject, but it does have the topic: Haru.

Yes, she’s talking about spring in that passage. So she says something like, “When it comes to spring, the dawn (is the best)”, adding a lengthy description after that why and how the dawn is so wonderful in spring. Using the same sentence “A-wa B” format, she switches to other topics such as summer, autumn, and winter:

Natsu-wa Yoru (夏は夜): summer + clitic particle + night → Talking about summer, night (is the best).

Aki-wa Yūgure (秋は夕暮れ): autumn + clitic particle + dusk → As for autumn, (I love) dusk.

Fuyu-wa Tsutomete (冬はつとめて): winter + clitic particle + early morning → Winter? (Definitely,) the early morning.

By the way, please note that the parenthesized parts above: “is the best”, “I love”, and “Definitely” represent options to express an implicit message of the original. To compose a felicitous English sentence, you need to add a supplemental phrase, which the Japanese counterpart doesn’t require. Another keynote is that even if “the dawn” is the subject in the translated English sentence, it’s not one in the original Japanese.

No Subject At All?

Then, does the Japanese language ever use a subject? Yes, it does. But, since it’s not subject-prominent as English, there are many cases where sentences don’t require subjects. Please refer to my column article: Absence of Subjects.

By the way, there’s something that still many Japanese get all wrong. That is a misconception about the particle “-wa” suffixed to the words “Haru, Natsu, Aki, Fuyu” in the previous section. Taught at school that the particle was a subject marker (besides the particle “-ga”), many people still believe so. However, as the research advances, its role as a topic marker instead of a subject marker gradually becomes predominant. As a result, the difference between the particles “-wa” and “-ga” becomes simple and clear:

-wa: a topic marker. Suffixed to a noun that is the topic of the sentence.
Ex.: Hana-wa Sakura. (As for flowers, definitely, cherry blossoms.)

-ga: a subject marker. Suffixed to a noun that is the subject of the sentence.
Ex.: Sakura-ga Kirei. (Cherry blossoms are beautiful.)

In conclusion, the Japanese language is topic prominent that allows null-subject sentences while also using subject-predicate structures. The most conspicuous examples are those using the topic-marker and subject-marker particles: -wa and -ga.

When it comes to spring, there's nothing like the dawn.