That’s correct, you can insult someone accidentally while complimenting them in a similar way. The particles は (as in wa) and が (ga) have different connotations that can simply different things.
So saying メリーさんの顔はきれい (Mary-san no kao wa kirei, “Mary has a beautiful face”) causes an implication that Mary has a beautiful face, (… But nothing else about her is beautiful). Changing the は for が makes the statement come across as intended.
Without going into detail on the whole wa vs ga thing, wa is more like “as for x…” which can imply a “but…” at the end, whether stated or not, which causes this effect.
Is it Japanese i am think of that has an exclusionary “we” form? Almost as in “We(all of US but not YOU) were invited to the party.”
That’s correct, you can insult someone accidentally while complimenting them in a similar way. The particles は (as in wa) and が (ga) have different connotations that can simply different things.
So saying メリーさんの顔はきれい (Mary-san no kao wa kirei, “Mary has a beautiful face”) causes an implication that Mary has a beautiful face, (… But nothing else about her is beautiful). Changing the は for が makes the statement come across as intended.
Without going into detail on the whole wa vs ga thing, wa is more like “as for x…” which can imply a “but…” at the end, whether stated or not, which causes this effect.
Thanks for the breakdown!
Inverted “butterface”?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clusivity
Many languages have that. I’m not familiar with Japanese, but it’s not on that article’s list at least.