は

は marks the topic: the person or thing the rest of the sentence is about. It goes straight after a noun, and what follows says something about that noun. English has no word for it. "As for…" comes closest, and a translation normally leaves it out.

As a particle は is read wa. Inside other words the same character is read ha, except in greetings like こんにちは that grew out of the particle.

The comment after は can be any kind of sentence, not only one that ends in です.

Leaving the topic out

Once it is clear who or what you are talking about, the topic is dropped. Repeating 私は in every sentence sounds as if you were insisting on "I, for my part".

Common mistakes

A question word is not normally a topic, because a topic is something already known. だれ, 何 and どれ take が or を, not は. The question word can come after は, as in これはなん何ですか.

• × だれは先生ですか → だれが先生ですか

The particle is always written は, however it sounds.

• × わたしわ学生です → わたしは学生です

Usage notes

These go beyond marking a plain topic.

Contrast

Two things each marked with は are set against each other.

One は can carry the contrast alone, and the other half is left unsaid. This is why は turns up so often in negative sentences.

は after another particle

は takes the place of が and を: the topic 肉 above would have been 肉を. に, で, から and まで usually stay, and は follows them: には, では, からは.