“Quick question; what is the difference between は and が?”

It’s a quick question, to be sure, but it doesn’t have a quick answer. Canned lines like “は is the topic particle” or “が is the subject marker” are rarely of any help; the English and Japanese notions of “subject” don’t map 1:1 to each other, and the concept of grammatical topic is unlikely to strike home intuitively for a native English speaker. These one-line explanations are perhaps useful to people who have studied linguistics formally, but as a fan of more naturalistic language learning processes I (personally) never find them to be helpful, and I have no interest in diving into theory in order to make sense of them.

My chosen strategy was to not worry about it and just read until I had had enough exposure to the Japanese language that I was able to form a somewhat intuitive understanding of these two particles (plus one more which I feel is often overlooked despite serving a similar function). You can absolutely do this too, and in fact I would strongly recommend that rather than approaching the problem by trying to learn “when to use は vs が”, you instead pump the brakes on output and focus on getting exposure to a LOT of the language so you too can build up this intuition.

However, since I fully recognize that I’m probably a little weird for being comfortable with this kind of delayed gratification (and since the question above is just so, so common), I thought I’d try to put into words the simple one-line rules that I personally use to conceptualize these two (or three) tricky particles.

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“The formal version of this would use します instead of する”
“Since you’re speaking casually, you don’t have to use です”

I see statements like this all the time, and it always makes me twitch a little bit. It’s a bit of an “all squares are rectangles” problem; certainly much casual speech is informal, and certainly much polite speech is also formal, but there’s more to the story than just these two cases. In fact, there are two pairs of opposite modes, which together produce four noteworthy combinations:

• Polite vs Non-polite
• Formal vs Colloquial

Let’s define each one of these modes before we move on to mixing them together.

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Over the last couple of years, as I’ve spent a lot of time reading Japanese literature and immersing myself in the language, I’ve become increasingly aware of a particular phenomenon which is endemic to the language at large; which can easily and precisely explain many seemingly unrelated mechanics; and which is so rarely mentioned that I didn’t even realize it had a name until I stumbled across it one day. The 内・外 dichotomy (“uchi/soto”; essentially translated as “inner/outer”) is, with only slight exaggeration, what I might consider in many ways to be a “unified theory of Japanese”. It forms a key component of both the language and the societal practices that define the culture at large, and by understanding it I believe it’s possible to form a deeper, more intuitive grasp of Japanese as a whole.

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According to JMDict, かける is a word with around 37 definitions. The idea of memorizing all of these definitions is enough to make anyone think twice about learning Japanese at all, but even taking them one by one can be daunting if it’s not clear which one applies to the given moment.

It’s my belief that all of these “definitions” share a common abstract idea, in the same way that the English words “run” or “get” can be used in a multitude of ways that all make intuitive sense to a native speaker, even when encountering a new collocation for the first time.

Personally I find it especially helpful to split this overarching abstract into three more specific (though still widely applicable) glosses.

かける meaning 1: “set upon“

　・メガネを掛ける　set some glasses upon your face
　・腰をかける　set your body down on a chair
　・負担をかける　put a burden on somebody
　・心配を掛ける　lay your worries on someone
　・金を賭ける　set money upon the gambler’s table　★
　・水をかける　to sprinkle water onto something　★
　・１０かける１０　ten times ten; ten set upon itself ten times

かける meaning 2: “expend into“

　・スパイスをかける　to add spices into a dish
　・金を賭ける　to bet money　★
　・腕によりをかける　to put effort into work
　・水をかける　to sprinkle water onto something　★
　・時間を掛ける　to spend time doing something

かける meaning 3: “engage or activate“

　・かける　(standalone): the standard “use” action in video games (“open” the door, “pull” the lever)
　・アイロンを掛ける　to iron clothes
　・電話をかける　to make a phone call; to use the phone
　・鍵をかける　to engage a lock

Each of these three broad meanings fall under one single overarching meaning, which I think of as “raise up“, because to me it evokes the idea of a movement upwards, whether abstract or concrete, towards some end. In the first case, you must “raise up” that which you wish to “set upon” something else. In the second, you figuratively “raise up” that which you wish to spend (a parallel may exist with あげる, where you “raise up” what you wish to give). In the third case, the thing that is being “raised up” is your own hand, to manipulate objects.

(Examples marked with a star are those which I feel work nearly as well in either of the first two groups)