The topic marker (은/는)¶
What the heck is a topic marker?¶
The topic marker is one of the neatest parts of Korean grammar. Analogously to the subject marker 이/가, you use 은 after a consonant and 는 after a vowel.
From a linguistics point of view, topic markers are pretty rare and you won't be used to them even coming from another language with case. Wikipedia has the following to say:
A topic marker is a grammatical particle used to mark the topic of a sentence. It is found in Japanese, Korean, Kurdish, Quechua, Ryukyuan, Imonda and to a limited extent Classical Chinese. It often overlaps with the subject of a sentence, causing confusion for learners, as most other languages lack it. It differs from a subject in that it puts more emphasis on the item and can be used with words in other roles as well. Thus, the subject and the object are not always the topic and comment but often have straightforward relationships to them.
The best translation that I can say is that "X은" roughly means "As for X…". To try and illustrate what makes the topic marker so neat, I'm first going to show you examples where the topic and subject coincide, and then examples where they don't.
Examples as a glorified subject marker¶
Properly speaking, the topic and subject are a bit orthogonal; they don't a priori have to be the same object. But often they are. And remember, Korean encourages you to drop nouns that are obvious by context. So when they coincide, you don't have to repeat "subject 이/가".1 That means the earlier example sentences
Example
- 고양이가 폭신해요 = The cat is soft.
- 앨리스가 고양이를 쓰다듬어요 = Alice pets the cat.
would probably more commonly be written as
Example
- 고양이는 폭신해요 = As for the cat, [it] is soft = The cat is soft.
- 앨리스는 고양이를 쓰다듬어요 = As for Alice, [she] pets cat = Alice pets the cat.
If you were only writing one sentence, I think the use of 은/는 is more common. (You can get a bit more into the weeds about why these are subtly different when the sentences are used in a longer context, but I won't address that yet.)
Examples where the topic is used to set context¶
I think it's better if I just start by throwing some examples at you. Here are several examples where the topic is 저(는), and then a sentence with a different subject. (All of these examples use adjectives, but much later on I'll show some with verbs.)
Example
- 저는 오늘이 형편없었어요 = As for me, today was terrible = My day was terrible.
- 저는 수학이 어려워요 = As for me, math is difficult = Math is difficult for me.
- 저는 올해가 어려웠어요 = As for me, this year was difficult = I have had a difficult year.
- 저는 고양이가 좋아요 = As for me, cats are good = I like cats.
- 저는 고양이가 예뻐요 = As for me, cats are pretty = I find cats pretty.
These examples are meant to showcase how topic markers are really flexible. All of these are simple sentences about the speaker. In English, you use all sorts of different ways of attaching yourself; the examples show a lot of different patterns to work around this
- possession2 ("my day")
- using a certain auxiliary word ("math is difficult for me" or "I have had a difficult year")
- outright rephrasing the grammar structure ("I like cats", "I find cats pretty").
It's jarring to me in English you need so many different constructions. In Korean, it's much simpler: just use 은/는 to set the topic. So the topic marker gives you a single unified way to create contextual sentences. That's what makes it so expressive.