Topic and Subject Markers

은/는 or 이/가? Oh noooooooooo! You’re writing a sentence and suddenly you find yourself faced with this dreaded question. Not again! Maybe you’ve been studying Korean for a little while and you’ve learned about topic and subject markers, but when it comes to actually using them, it can be confusing. I think most people go through this, and I think it’s partly because most resources introduce -은/는 and -이/가 by showing individual sentences, when really to understand how these particles work you need to see them in context in a conversation. I’m no expert, but let me see if I can help a bit by presenting a short little story about someone’s household and looking at the topic and subject markers.

  1. 제 가족은 우리 여동생하고 저예요. (My family is my younger sister and me.)
  2. 그리고 강아지하고 고양이를 키워요. (We also have a dog and a cat.)
  3. 매일 아침에 강아지는 배가 고파요. (Every morning, the dog is hungry.)
  4. 그래서 여동생이 강아지한테 먹이를 줘요. (So my sister gives him food.)
  5. 제 방 안에는 다른 먹이가 있어요. (There’s other pet food in my bedroom.)
  6. 하지만 그 먹이는 우리 고양이의 먹이예요. (But that is the cat’s food.)

Sentence 1: 가족은 -> the -은 means our TOPIC is going to be my family. I’m setting up the audience’s expectation of what we’re going to talk about.

Sentence 2: no -은/는 or -이/가 -> Since I haven’t specified a subject here, we’re still talking about the family. A sentence doesn’t have to include an -이/가 or -은/는!

Sentence 3: 강아지는 -> this -는 means I’m shifting my TOPIC from the family in general to talk specifically about the previously-mentioned dog for a while. He’s always hungry in the morning. The way this is said in Korean is by saying that your stomach is hungry, so the dog is the topic (with -는), but the stomach is the subject of the verb, so the stomach gets the subject marker.

Sentence 4: 여동생이 -> this -이 subject marker means I’m not changing the TOPIC (still talking about our hungry dog, and so no -은/는), but specifying that my sister (with the -이 subject marker, because she’s the one performing the verb) is the one who feeds him. Not me, not the neighbor, but my sister does it. If I used the topic marker here, I would be telling the listener that the dog isn’t the topic anymore … that I wanted them to focus on my sister, instead. By using the subject marker, I’m clarifying that she’s the one who performs the action of feeding the dog, but without directing too much attention to her.

Sentence 5 gets a little more complicated in how it combines the topic and subject markers:

  • 제 방 안에는 -> that -는 means I’m changing the TOPIC again … changing it to what? The topic is now the location “in my room”! (Yeah, markers can attach to phrases and particles, not just individual words.) We’re now going to talk about something that happens in my room, contrasting it to what happens elsewhere in the house. But what is it that is happening in my room?
  • 다른 먹이가 -> the subject marker -가 introduces this other food that we haven’t mentioned before. New information usually gets -이/가.

Sentence 6: 그 먹이는 -> this -는 means I’m changing the TOPIC again. I’m contrasting this food with the food my sister gives to the dog. Now I’m not just talking about things happening in my room—I’m talking specifically about the food in my room, saying THIS food is the cat’s, it’s not the dog’s. It’s my new TOPIC, so it gets the -는.

Apples and Oranges, Meat and Salt

Sometimes people interpret -이/가 and -은/는 as very similar, equal particles that you need to choose between when writing a sentence, but this is not the case! I think of that as being like comparing apples and oranges, because they actually serve completely different purposes in Korean sentences. The subject marker and topic marker play completely different roles in a conversation.

The subject marker -이/가 performs a purely grammatical function of pointing out which noun in a sentence is the subject of the verb. In short sentences, this might seem unnecessary (and so native speakers often leave it off), but in longer sentences with multiple clauses, it can be crucial to clarity! If you look through the sentences above, you’ll see that -이/가 are always attached to a noun that is the subject of a verb:

  • Sentence 3: 배가: stomach [is hungry]
  • Sentence 4: 여동생이: sister [gives the dog food]
  • Sentence 5: 먹이가: pet food [is in my room]

The topic marker -은/는, on the other hand, performs a less rigid function in Korean sentences, highlighting the topic of conversation or directing the listener’s attention. This has a lot of flexibility, and can allow you to emphasize whatever you want in your sentence! It doesn’t have to be used with the noun that is performing the verb and can instead attach to other parts of sentences, including entire phrases or clauses! In Sentence 5, the topic marker -는 is attached to the phrase “제 방 안에” (inside my room). I’m signifying that my topic here is stuff that exists in or happens inside my room. You could NOT, grammatically, use a subject marker -이/가 here, because the inside of my room is not the subject of a verb.

There’s always a correct grammatical place in a sentence for a subject marker. Your only choice with the subject marker is whether to include it or not—since it isn’t always necessary for your meaning to be clear—but if you do include it, it can only be used with the subject of the verb. Whatever you attach the subject marker to is like the food ingredients in a dish, like you’re saying, “This is a BEEF stew.” Even if you don’t say out loud that it’s beef stew, beef will still be the main ingredient, the subject of the dish. (Using the subject marker -이/가 in your sentence is like saying out loud, “This is a BEEF stew,” clarifying for other people what the main ingredient is.)

The topic marker is more like … I don’t know … seasoning. It’s like the salt in a dish, rather than the basic ingredients that are necessary. It determines the nuances, the flavor, beyond just the basic substance of the dish. Maybe it’s a Polish beef stew with caraway seeds … maybe it’s a Spanish beef stew with paprika … maybe it’s a Vietnamese beef stew with ginger and lemongrass. It isn’t a beef stew without the main ingredient being beef (in this analogy, the beef is the subject of the verb, and could therefore take the subject marker -이/가), but the flavorings are much more optional and flexible, depending on the cook’s preferences. When creating a sentence in Korean, you use topic markers to give flavor and nuance.

Topic markers give that flavor to a sentence by placing subtle emphasis, implying contrast, etc. The topic marker is almost never grammatically necessary—you can, after all, make a bland beef stew that’s just beef, with no salt or spices. That would be a Korean sentence with no markers or with just the subject marker: bare bones, no nonsense. This is useful in a longer conversation, though, because you don’t want every single phrase in every single sentence to be packed full of flavor! That would be overwhelming and distracting. You choose when to use the flavor-imparting topic marker when you want to draw people’s attention to something specific.

Okay, enough of that analogy. I hope it didn’t just make it more confusing! I just wanted to try to clarify how the subject marker and topic marker have different vibes and serve different purposes: -이/가 marks the beef in your stew of a sentence, -은/는 is the paprika and lemongrass.

Some Analysis

If you consider all of this and look again at the example sentences above, you can see that context is crucial to knowing when to use -은/는 and -이/가, because it’s all about the ebb and flow of the conversation.

For example, Sentence 3 could be written a bunch of different ways, depending on exactly what meaning you wanted to convey. If you said you wanted to write the single sentence “In the morning, our dog is hungry” in Korean, it would be hard to tell where to put a topic marker without any context. In our example here, I wrote it as “매일 아침에 강아지는 배가 고파요,” because we were changing the topic of conversation to begin talking about the dog we’d previously mentioned. I was implying that I was probably going to say more about the dog after that, or that I was going to compare/contrast the dog being hungry to the cat not being hungry. I was telling the audience what they could expect, moving forward … saying, “So … AS FOR OUR DOG, he’s always hungry in the morning.” But let me show one other way that particular sentence could be written here—just by moving the topic marker—and talk about how the nuances would be different.

매일 아침에는 강아지 배가 고파요.

The subject of the hungry verb is still the dog’s stomach (배가), but if I attach the topic marker -는 to 아침에 instead of 강아지, this sentence would now emphasize that I’m talking about the morning. Maybe the dog is only hungry in the morning, or maybe I’m about to start talking about stuff that happens in the morning. I’m announcing, “We’re talking about the MORNING now!” So if I wrote it that way, Sentence 4 would also be emphasizing that my sister feeds him IN THE MORNING, because our topic would still be morning until I use another -은/는 topic marker. I could use as many subject markers as I wanted in a thousand following sentences, but as long as there was no other -은/는, everyone would understand that I was still talking about mornings. I could write that President Obama likes arugula, and the audience would understand that I was meaning that he likes it IN THE MORNING, unless I used another topic marker. I could say that there are five rooms in my house, and the audience would be thinking, “Well, okay, but … uh … what does this have to do with mornings?” and they would be waiting for me to clarify the connection.

Returning to our example sentences, let’s look at another place you could put the topic marker in the sentence about the hungry dog, and how the nuances would be different again.

매일 아침에 강아지 배는 고파요.

Here I’ve moved the topic marker -는 to attach it to 배, the dog’s stomach. This is a really weird sentence, because … why would I want to emphasize the dog’s stomach? LOL. I guess maybe if we were going to be changing the topic of conversation to … I don’t know … health problems with the dog’s stomach? Or if we were contrasting that his stomach is hungry, but his pancreas isn’t? LOL! I mean, in Korean you could write this sentence this way to imply these very unexpected and surreal meanings, if you wanted to, whereas in English you would need to use a bunch of additional words to get the same subtle meaning across. This is why topic markers are so powerful and elegant, because they allow you to imply a lot and direct your audience’s attention just by adding a tiny particle in the right place.

In Conclusion

All of this is why it’s difficult to explain -은/는 vs -이/가 by looking at just a single sentence in beginner lessons. A topic marker in a single isolated sentence generally doesn’t tell you a lot, because it’s usually going to be indicating how our current sentence relates to other sentences either before or afterward.

  • Were you just talking about your dog, but now you want to talk about your neighbor’s dog instead? Use a topic marker to show you’re contrasting how the two pups are different.
  • Were you just talking about what you did in the morning, but now you want to shift to talking about what you’re going to do in the afternoon? “Never mind the morning,” you want to tell your audience. “We’re talking about the afternoon now.” Use a topic marker to indicate your change of focus.
  • Was someone else just talking about their job, but now you want to change the topic to a class you’re taking? Use the topic marker to announce that you’re redirecting the conversation because you’re done listening to them drone on and on about their annoying boss!
  • Were you just talking about your dog’s gall bladder not being hungry, but now you want to talk about his stomach in contrast? Use the topic marker!!!

In any particular sentence, there are specific places where a subject marker is implied, even if it isn’t there. Any time there’s a subject of a verb, there’s a hidden -이/가 there, even if you don’t choose to use it—it’s just part of how Korean grammar works.

But topic markers … ah! Topic markers are never grammatically necessary, never implied or inferred, completely optional at the discretion of the speaker based on their own inclinations, thoughts, opinions, and intentions. Grammatically, you could leave off all the -은/는s if you wanted to, but why would you? Subject markers are the meat and potatoes, but topic markers are the spice of life!

Why do we use -가 when it rains?

I was recently writing something about topic-marking particles (은/는) and subject-marking particles (이/가), and I suddenly started wondering why we almost always use -이/가 with rain and snow. When it’s raining, why do we say, “비가 와요” and not “비는 와요”? When it’s snowing, why does “눈이 와요” sound natural but “눈은 와요” sounds weird? I thought about this a lot and came up with some possibly wacky personal speculation. (I do this a lot, the wacky speculation thing. I’m insatiably curious!)

I think maybe this is because our conversational focus is really unlikely to be the rain or snow itself. The topic marker -은/는 generally serves a couple of primary purposes: (1) setting the topic of conversation or (2) showing comparison or contrast. When we start talking about a rainy day, it might seem like we should say, “비는 와요,” because we’re talking about rain, right? Isn’t rain our topic?

But once I thought about it, I realized that people don’t tend to really focus on talking about the rain as a phenomenon—instead, they’re probably focusing on the fact that the ground will be wet, the picnic will be canceled, they like the sound against the windows, driving will be dangerous, or whatever. When you’re talking about rain, you’re usually talking about the effect it’s having on you or the world, not starting a conversation about the actual concept or physical characteristics of rain. So rain isn’t your actual topic … it’s just the cause of events.

A lot of teachers suggest thinking of the topic marker as implying “as for…” (like “저는 피자를 좋아해요” meaning “As for me, I like pizza”), but if we did this with my rain example, we would have “비는 와요” meaning something like “As for the rain, it comes,” which implies a kind of focus on the rain that doesn’t sound at all natural. Like we’re comparing the rain to other things that haven’t come, or something. Sounds funky to me.

Also, when we say “비가 와요,” the rain is usually new information which we haven’t mentioned in previous sentences, and new information usually merits the subject marker -이/가. Maybe if we were afterward going to continue to talk about the characteristics of the rain itself (rather than the environment in which the rain is falling or the effect the rain is having), then we might use the topic marker, but I haven’t seen it often with reference to weather.

I got curious and looked at the lyrics for BTS’s song “Rain,” because I figured an entire song about rain might have some examples of the topic marker -는 being used with 비, and I think the song’s lyrics contain some useful examples of nuances that the topic marker can bring. In most places in the song, 비 takes the subject marker -가 or takes no marker at all. But here are a couple of examples of lines where 비 takes the topic marker -는:

  • 숙소 밖 여전히 비는 내리네 (It’s still raining outside the dorm)
  • 이 비는 누굴 위해서 내리는 걸까? (Who is this rain falling for?)

In the first line—“숙소 밖 여전히 비는 내리네”—I personally think the topic marker gives a feeling that this is familiar rain, the same rain that has been falling outside the dorm since BTS were trainees, almost as if it has been continuous during all of those years, maybe is even composed of the same raindrops. I’m far from fluent, but it just gives me that sort of feeling. If it were written with the subject marker -가 instead (“숙소 밖 여전히 비가 내리네”), I think there would be less of a sense of it being the same rain. It would be less poetic and more just … yeah … it’s always raining outside the dorm. Big deal.

In the second line I listed above—“이 비는 누굴 위해서 내리는 걸까?”—I think the topic marker is being used to differentiate this specific rain from other rain. THIS rain … this SPECIFIC rain, as compared to other rain I’ve experienced … who is THIS rain falling for? I think if it were written with the subject marker -가 (“이 비가 누굴 위해서 내리는 걸까?”) it wouldn’t really make much sense. With the adjective 이 (“this”), we’re implying that we’re talking about some specific rain, which implies differentiating it from other rain, and we use the topic marker for these kinds of contrast.

That last thought made me curious to investigate whether nouns following 이, 그, and 저 more often take the topic marker rather than the subject marker, but perhaps that is an investigation for another day, since I’ve already ventured pretty far afield in my speculations for today.

I also have a longer blog entry that’s more generally about topic- and subject-marking particles, but that, too, will wait for another day!

As I’ve said, I’m not a native speaker. This is really just me letting my brain run free to try to imagine why the language works the way it does, so I would be happy to hear other thoughts about this!

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Side note: The lyrics I quoted above use the verb 내리다 (to fall, drop, descend, etc.) instead of 오다 to describe rain. I think this, too, is to create a more poetic feel. In use, I’ve most often seen 내리다 used to describe a person’s act of disembarking from a mode of transportation (getting out of a car, getting off a bicycle, getting off a train, etc.), and people usually use 오다 to talk casually about falling rain and snow. But it’s good to remember that other verbs can be used, too!

Welcome!

Warning: This blog is not going to teach you Korean. It isn’t even going to try to teach you Korean.

Then why the heck am I here and what am I doing? Yeah, I’m not a qualified Korean teacher, but what I am is a native English speaker who has been seriously studying Korean for a little less than 2 years and who loves grammar, etymology, word play, dad jokes, rhyming, alliteration, and finding ways to make learning fun for myself and (I hope) for other people, too.

So if you’re looking for someone to teach you Korean, I have to tell you … this blog ain’t the place. However, if you’re already studying Korean and are looking for someplace to read about a fellow student’s thoughts, realizations, and attempts to explain random stuff … welcome!

When I first started learning Korean, I struggled a lot and got SO much help from other students! I found that sometimes someone who knew only a little more than me could help me more than someone who knew a LOT more, because someone who’s fluent often didn’t understand why something was confusing to a beginner. Sometimes when I asked really advanced students or native speakers for help, they gave me answers that I really couldn’t understand and I ended up feeling a bit discouraged, but sometimes other less-advanced students could explain things to me in baby words and the lightbulb would go off over my head and I’d finally understand something that had been kicking my butt.

So that’s where I come in with this blog … I’m not a very advanced student, so that means I should be able to help more than a native speaker, right? LOL

No, definitely not, but I might be able to help in different ways, because I’ve experienced the struggle, too!

For the past 8 months or so, I’ve been helping with giving feedback on other students’ writing in one of the self-study clubs at the online Korean school I attend. I found that a lot of people had common questions about particles, markers, conjugation, word order, word spacing, and other stuff. I kept writing explanations to try to clarify things for them as best I could … and the idea for this blog began to grow.

I’ve also had long and extremely nerdy conversations in DMs with friends about Korean grammar, Hanja, and all kinds of other obsessive stuff I thought no one else would be interested in, but then when I started mentioning some of it on Twitter, people were curious, so I thought … huh … and the idea for this blog began to grow even more.

Let me give a massive DISCLAIMER about my level of Korean knowledge: I AM NOT FLUENT. I will probably write things here that are wrong, but I’ll try to always make it clear when I’m speculating or trying to figure something out, as opposed to stating facts. I’ll probably still mess up sometimes, but I’ll do my best!

I’m also planning to give links here to resources I find useful, like specific YouTube videos or HTSK lessons that explain something I’m working on. Like I have a favorite YouTube video for explaining how to understand large numbers in Korean … that sort of stuff. I’ll try to point you to places where people who know a lot more than me explain things way better than I could.

This isn’t going to be some kind of organized system of lessons or anything … just my random thoughts inspired by conversations I’m having or things I’m encountering in my studies and when helping other students with their homework. But I hope it will be interesting, useful, and … above all … fun!

And … hey … what’s that name all about? Moonbop Bebop? What the heck? Well … Moonbop comes from 문법, the Korean word for “grammar.” And Bebop? 비법 in Korean refers to a sort of secret way of doing things. So in this blog, I’ll do my best to share whatever grammar secrets I’m able to figure out … along with whatever other random Korean or general language learning stuff that strikes my fancy. I hope some of it is interesting to other people as well as me!