N5 grammar

〜が好き

What you like and what you are good at

Formation

A small group of words take が where English would use a plain object: 好き, 嫌い, 上手, 下手, ほしい, わかる. Most of them are adjectives in Japanese rather than verbs, and が marks the thing being described. Learn them as a set and the particle stops feeling arbitrary.

Examples

〜が好き is marked in each sentence. Tap any word for its dictionary entry.

  1. I like this love song.

  2. I'd like some cheese.

  3. I don't know how to cook.

  4. I like disco music.

  5. I love this book above all.

The explanation is ours, written for this site. Example sentences from Tatoeba (CC BY 2.0 FR), each machine-checked to actually contain the pattern. Furigana is generated automatically, so a rare reading may be imperfect.