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tamago o yoku tabemasu.

kudamono wa amari tabemasen.

Why for the first sentence with tamago, the particle "o" is used where as for the second sentence with kudamono, particle "wa" is used?

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Balaji Jothiraman
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  • Hint: It's more to do with the verb than the noun. – Angelos Dec 25 '17 at 18:00
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    It sounds contranstive to me. "I often eat eggs. (However) I don't eat fruits much (unlike other foods)." There are answered questions on this site regarding the contrastive wa particle – binom Dec 25 '17 at 22:27

1 Answers1

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This is why "wa" is called a topic marker rather than a subject marker.

Topic Marker

The topic marker is one of many Japanese particles. It is written with the hiragana は, which is normally pronounced ha, but when used as a particle is pronounced wa. It is placed after whatever is to be marked as the topic. If what is to be the topic would have had が (ga), the subject marker, or を ((w)o), the direct object marker, as its particle, those are replaced by は. Other particles (for example: に, と, or で) are not replaced, and は is placed after them. (emphasis mine)

は marks the subject of a sentence only in, say, 80% of the cases. In your case, を was replaced by は because fruit is the (contrasted) topic of the second sentence. Note that this は is also working as a contrast marker. Also note that は is much preferred in negative sentences.

See:

naruto
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