[steven]

I don't mean to stir things up, I just want to clarify something. When using google as a tool for language, (for like... semi 'statistics') you have to consider the alternatives. I don't think any of the　クラスは/クラスが example exceeded even 100 results. The クラスで example got over a hundred thousand results. When taken into consideration statistics-wise, you're talking about a grain of sand on a beach type of situation. This is just proof that natives make mistakes, too. It can also be proof that you CAN use certain abnormal grammar occasionally in very particular circumstances.

I don't think that what chiuchimu was saying about は/が was WRONG, persay. It was certainly a bit misleading, though. I don't think it was intended at all though. Part of the purpose of my post after that was to clarify the "rules" as they are *to my best knowledge* officially written in my basic Japanese grammar book (written in Japanese to teach to Japanese people). I was in the same boat as Kyle for a few minutes in that I got kinda discomfortable with my knowledge of Japanese... chiuchimu's post set off a red flag, and after some review I realized there were a couple of points that could've been better clarified. He covered SOME of the usage, but not all of it. Without covering the remaining usages of は/が it made it look like his examples were the only differences in the usages of は/が. I don't mean any offense by this though. When teaching English it's hard for me to recall ALL of the rules for certain grammar and then explain it articulately to my students. Keep in mind that as a "native" speaker of our langauge, we are all pro (even people who have terrible grammar...). That doesn't mean that we have a perfect grasp on the mechanics of it though. It's kind of like how there are some really great improvisors (like in Jazz) who have no idea what the hell they are doing half the time. They can explain some of what they're doing, but they're gonna be leaving out a lot because they might not know that playing an F# over a Cmaj7 is going to sound better than an F... even though they are both a half step away from a chord tone.

I mentioned it before, but I said there were certain characteristics about chiuchimu's Japanese that seemed like some Japanese-American's Japanese that I've encountered. I think I remember that chiuchimu has lived outside of Japan for an extended amount of time, right? If I'm wrong I apologize for being rude! I tried looking up certain japanese-american specific Japanese the other day but didn't have much luck. I know it exists though and I wish I had known more Japanese when I was in frequent contact with it.

My post is gonna get long with this thought, but I'll go ahead and say it. I think and talk a lot about "interlanguage *中間言語*". I think that EVERYONE speaks an 'interlanguage'. By that, I mean everyone speaks an approximation of their own langauge. We all have certain qualities and mistakes in our writing or speech that vary from what is "official". So there are a lot of areas that can be looked at in a different light depending on who's looking at it. I talked about the は/が　thing with some co-workers and they said some things were hard to call even for a native. They gave one example that "had" to be は, and much to their surprise I found a loophole that could make it が (not that an exmaple like I gave was very realistic). The topic took like 3-5 pages in a grammar book that is like 400 pages long... we probably talked about it for 20 minutes. That's just 3-5 pages of a BASIC grammar book for crying out loud. While it's certainly a fundamental area of Japanese, it's one of those areas where you shouldn't let yourself get hung up on, or else you'll never move on.

This might be straying from the topic of the thread quite a bit, but I think it has a lot to do with what I'm trying to say. For all of you English speakers out there, I have a question for you to think about. Which is correct?

"My favorite memory was when..."
or
"My favorite memory is when..."

I'm sure there is an officially correct answer, but people probably frequently use both phrases. You can make a decent argument for either one. Your memory is about the past, but it's a memory that you have now. There's a lot of gray area like that in a language, so it can be hard to teach a language in that sense. Sometimes you have to teach what is 'used' instead of what is 'correct' (I don't mean to imply that because 1 in a hundred thousand Japanese speakers of all ages messes up his or her は/が usage you should too, by the way).

Another thing, just tonight I went out to eat/drink and I talked to a man from Ibaraki-ken. I could tell he couldn't understand more than 50% of what i was saying. He was jokingly saying things like "speak Japanese". I admit that I couldn't understand most of what he was saying either. This isn't because I'm a foreigner and I don't understand Japanese, by the way. This has to do with the fact that he had a thick accent from where he's from and I have a thick accent from where I live. He couldn't understand one of the guys with whom he came-- another one of the guys who was there (who I happen to know) has a little cleaner Japanese and even still he could probably only understand about 70% of what he said. This is part of what I'm saying with interlanguage-- there are many different dialects, which I would categorize as an "approximation" of "japanese" (with all do respect to Japanese dialects and standard Japanese).

We had a good time though. Our different 'versions' of Japanese wasn't seen as a reson to get personal with one another. We had a couple drinks together and laughed at each others stupid accents and I frankly told him that even though he was from 水戸 I still didn't like natto. We had fun communicating. I think that's all that language should and is really about.