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Ah ok. I still have trouble with particles. Thanks for the correction :)
BTW do you have any tips for helping with recall? That's the other thing that I'm having a really difficult time with, and no matter how much I keep looking at my notes I still have trouble with it :/
(japanese doest normally use spaces this is just to show the divide between words)
を=objects, when a verb is doing something to an object it uses を
example バス を まつ to wait for the bus
ケーキ を たべる to eat cake
に=indirect objects. When the verb results in you ariving to or becoming the object (particle に has a craptonne of other uses you'll learn later)
がっこう に いく
to go to school
ゆうめい に なる
to become famous
は and が are nuanced as shit and annoying to explain but in general は simply refers to whatever your talking about at the time. Its generally known as the topic marker.
ケーキ は おいしい
cake(what we're talking about) delicious.
interpreted as "cake is delicious"
が is a little simpler. It used to mark a subject. it it is kind of interchangable with は in some regards but it has more specificity and emphasis. が is also the particle you use when there is no object in a sentence. A verb that doesn't take on an object is called an "intransitive verb"
ねこ が いる
there is a cat
ドア が あいている
the door is open
えんぴつ が ある
there is a pencil
ひらがな が よめる
to be able to write hriagana
There are more particles and more nuances but these are the main ones . I used informal Japanese conjugations because I figured those would be the ones you learnt first.
On the whole は vs. が thing, I saw an interesting one where someone immitated a Q&A about whether the sun goes around the earth or whether the earth goes around the sun, and they did a translation of it below. The entire thing looked like this:
スミスさん:「太陽**は**地のまわりを回っているんですか。」
デービスさん:「いいえ、 そうではありません。地球**が**太陽のまわりを回っているんです。」
Mr. Smith: "Does the Sun revolve around the Earth?"
Mr. Davis: "No. It's the Earth that revolves around the Sun."
In this case, は is used in the question and が is used in the answer (I have manually added double asterisks on either side of them to make their positions in the passages clear). Is this because it doesn't matter which is emphasisted in Mr. Smith's question while Mr. Davis is trying to emphasise to Mr. Smith about the Earth being the revolving element as opposed to the Sun? Or is it more complicated than that?
Ok looked stuff up to clarify and in Japanese to say something rotates around something else you use
XはYの周り(orbit)を回っています。
this literally means
X is being rotated around Y's orbit.
The が in your example serves as a sort of specifier as in "it is not the sun that orbits the earth but the earth that orbits the sun" は is just general topic whereas がis specifically one thing
thats why when you say someone is smart you say あたまがいい "head is good" if you say あたま「は」いい that leaves it more like "as for the head, good" which as slightly less specific can mean that the head is something else but good.
This whole は が business is very complex and when I ask Japanese people not even they can tell me why. Just learn things slowly and you'll have these eureka moments where you realise why things are the way they are.