5 ms·

I took Japanese :S ドイツ語はぜんぜんわからない

• Arnavion 4y ago
  "The German language doesn't understand?" :) (wa should be ga. wa means German is the subject that is doing the not-understanding.)
  • astrange 4y ago
    No, it's fine as is. I think you have は and が backwards but neither of them imply ドイツ語 is "doing something" even though it's the subject of the sentence. It's a pro-drop language so meanings that don't make sense are just excluded.
    • Arnavion 4y ago
      >I think you have は and が backwards I do not.
      • astrange 4y ago
        は is not the "subject", it's the "topic", which is different.
  • throwntoday 4y ago
    I was split between で or は, forgot all about が. Funnily enough I think omitting the particle altogether would have made more sense. Edit: After further reading は seems to work fine. In this case I think both work but が places greater emphasis on the german language being the thing not understood. で however was totally incorrect :P. But due to the tacit nature of informal Japanese I think the context already informed the reader who doesn't understand what.
    • Arnavion 4y ago
      Yes, people will understand what you meant if you used wa.
      • throwntoday 4y ago
        I don't think it's a matter of people simply understanding what I meant to say, it's grammatically correct from what I have gathered.
  • hmry 4y ago
    が marks the subject, and the subject of わかる is the thing that's being understood, not the thing that's doing the understanding. (Maybe you meant subject in the non-grammatical way? It's confusing.) Either way, は is fine in this sentence to the best of my understanding. It marks ドイツ語 as the subject, and thus the thing being understood.