BEG 3 | Topic Particle -은/는 vs Subject Particle 이/가

What is ‘particle’?

Particles are attached to nouns and indicate what part of speech (subject, object, location, etc.) that noun is in a given sentence. Thanks to particles, the word order is flexible in Korean as long as verbs/adjectives come at the end of the sentence. In daily conversations, particles are mostly omitted unless they are emphasizing that particular part of the sentence. In writings, on the other hand, every single particle must be present and not omitted.

What is ‘subject particle’?

“I ate the pizza.”
Subject in this sentence is “I”, verb “ate” and the object is “pizza”.
Grammatical subject of the sentence is the one that did the action in the following verb. Grammatical object of the sentence is the one that the action is done to, the object did not do anything.

In Korean, the subject, the one that did the action, is marked by the subject particle -이/가.
Consonant + 이
Vowel + 가

What is ‘topic particle’?

Topic of the sentence of utterance, marked by the topic particle -은/는, is the keyword, headline, and the topic of what you are talking about: it is not about the grammatical subject of the sentence, but the content!

TRANSLATE -은,는 AS “AS FOR…”
Consonant + 은
Vowel + 는

The nouns that come before -은/는 are the keywords, topics of what you are going to say. The rest of the sentence is called comment. This comment can be one single verb, or a whole sentence of its own.

저는 한국 사람이에요. “I am Korean.” = As for me, (I) am Korean.
저는 목소리가 커요. “As for me, my voice is bit(loud).”
– I am the topic, what my sentence is about. Another subject for the following adjective comes after: 목소리(voice). So the comment part “목소리가 커요” itself is a whole sentence on its own. “I” am just the umbrella topic of my sentence: I am commenting something about me.

What if the topic is the subject of the sentence?

For general statements, use -은/는. It sounds more neutral and natural.
To emphasize the subject (like written in UPPER CASE), use -이/가 for a particular subject.

For more information, watch this video.