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は vs.が

nalo6451

Kouhai
19 Feb 2017
55
0
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Hey guys pretty simple (I hope) question. In the phrase お寺を見に行くつもりでしたが、天気よくなかったから、行きませんでした, is the highlighted interchangeable with ? In this sentence I can see が being preferentially used here if I wanted to emphasise the bad weather as the reason I didn't go to the temple (because が is used to emphasise a point) but I feel は would also be grammatically correct.

Please correct me if I'm wrong with any of this. Thanks.
 
は rules the whole sentence, thus, は usually also indicates the subject of the main predicative (行きませんでした in your sentence). In other words, が is the most common as the subject marker in the subordinate clause, and when は is used there, it has a contrastive nuance (other factor(s) than the weather was/were not bad, but the weather was bad). が doesn't emphasize the weather in that sentence, anyway.
In summary;
が is the most common in the subordinate clause. It doesn't emphasize the subject.
は is used when the subjects of the subordinate clause and the main clause are the same, or when it has a contrastive nuance.
 
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