Questions & Answers about kore wa nani desu ka.
What are the parts of これは何ですか？ and what does each one do?
- これ – this (a thing near the speaker; a pronoun).
- は – topic particle: marks これ as the topic, like saying “as for this…”.
- 何 – what.
- です – polite form of “to be” (copula), like “is”.
- か – question particle that turns the sentence into a question.
So the structure is literally: “As for this, what is (it)?” → “What is this?”
What does the particle は do here?
は marks the topic of the sentence: what you are talking about.
In これは何ですか？, it tells the listener “we’re talking about this thing”.
English often uses word order and stress for this, but Japanese uses particles.
You can think of it like adding “As for this…” before the rest of the sentence.
Why is は pronounced “wa” instead of “ha” here?
