/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>16696272
>私の名前は匿名です
>Watashi no namae wa tokumei desu
>My name is anonymous

Topic marker here indicates that "watashi no namae" (my name) is the topic. Speaking of this topic I, the speaker, indicate that it is "anonymous". More literally the translation would be:

>"Speaking of my name, it is anonymous"

However if someone were to ask the question:

> "Who's name is anonymous?"

I couldn't answer with

>私の名前は匿名です
>Watashi no namae wa tokumei desu

Instead it would be

私の名前が匿名です
>Watashi no namae GA tokumei desu
>My name is anonymous

In English the translation is the exact same, but in Japanese you have to specify that you aren't simply talking about what your name happens to be, in this scenario (where some asks the question "who's name is anonymous?") you want to specify that YOUR name is anonymous, you have to specify that the name "anonymous" is directly linked to "my name".

You could leave out the topic+topic marker in the first example:

>What is your name?
>Anonymous
Makes perfect sense

You can not leave out the subject+subject marker in the latter example:

>Who's name is anonymous?
>Anonymous
???. No, you need the bit where you indicate "My name is anonymous" for it to make sense.

As you can see from the above the before/after "rule" doesn't really apply, especially not once shit gets more complicated. I do however find that the above does show the IDEA of what the two participles usually convey.