Confused over -ga/-wa

[Sahaqiel]

OK, so I looked it up in my book, which has been as loyally reliable as a book can be, and it says it refers to a reference to a general topic.

For instance,

私はりんごオ食べたいです。
I want to eat the apple.

私がりんごオ食べたいです。
I want to eat an apple.

Or something like that. (Unless I misinterpreted what my book was trying to say.)

Now, my Japanese Conversation teacher tells me it is the opposite.
I am getting a bit confused, here.
Incidentally, where is the object-identifying 'o' when using Japanese on your computer? Is this something I should know about?

[Nyororin]

Originally Posted by Sahaqiel

Now, my Japanese Conversation teacher tells me it is the opposite.
I am getting a bit confused, here.
Incidentally, where is the object-identifying 'o' when using Japanese on your computer? Is this something I should know about?

I would also say it`s the opposite. But not exactly by the/an. I`ll leave the explanation of that to those much better at explaining - I seem to only have a knack for explaining English in Japanese, not Japanese in English.

I dropped in to tell you where to find the を. If you are typing romaji to Japanese (ie. ka becomes か via the IME), then you`ll want to type wo to get を. xtu or ltu for っ, xa/la for ぁ, xi/li for ぃ, and so on.
If you`re one of those very rare people who type using the kana key mappings, (ie. t for か), を is shift+0.

[Sahaqiel]

を
So empowering.
Thanks for that.

Anyways, I might have misinterpreted what my book was trying to say.
It had a bunch of situations to use ga in.
ありがとうございました。
Sahaqiel

[Miyavifan]

I think this might be helpful?

Japanese Particles - use of particle wa and ga

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by Miyavifan

I think this might be helpful?

Japanese Particles - use of particle wa and ga

The link is good, but I don't like the crappy way they explain the "special" use of が with 分かる for "to understand something." It's not special. 日本語が分かる literally means "Japanese is divided." The etymology of the kanji is "divide into parts, part, separate, sever." My Japanese teacher (I think her PhD was in linguistics) told me years ago that the sense is that you've done something like understood something by placing the relevant parts into the parts of your brain where it belongs ("stored away," as it were).

When you think about it that way, it's quite easy to remember 分かる takes が and not を.