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Comment by LancerSykera | Hacker News Reader

> Even some native speakers tend to have no idea when to use 'wa' or 'ga'

Glad you said this, so I can stop pounding my head over it. Just today I was thinking "doko wa kami desu ka? wait, no, doko ga kami desu ka... doko wa... doko ga... whatever."

Which kami I was thinking about is for me to know and you to guess incorrectly.

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I heard an anecdote about some guy telling his Japanese girlfriend, who had made him dinner, "Kore wa oishii!". Turns out he should have said "ga", as "wa" is often used to emphasize contrast, so what the girlfriend heard was "This was delicious [in contrast to your usual cooking]".

That is terrifying D:

And this is why I won't even say a single word of Japanese when I go the local Japanese restaurant (and yes, they definitely speak it as I can hear them talking to each other and their Japanese patrons.)

I think the more grammatically correct question sentences would be "kami wa doko desu ka" (as for kami, where is it?) or "doko ga kami ga (ar)imasu ka" (where does kami exist?).

> Which kami I was thinking about is for me to know and you to guess incorrectly.

Well, if you used the kanji then we wouldn't have to guess ;)

> Well, if you used the kanji then we wouldn't have to guess ;)

It was a trick: kami was used as a portmanteau of KAeru (frog) and MIso, so in this case, kami = frog-flavored miso soup :P

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