What is the meaning of が as a sentence-ending particle here?


I came across the sentence:

> 先生、お聞きしたいことがあります **が** 。

I would have thought that this would mean "Teacher, there's something I want
to ask you, **but** ..." (が indicating an unfinished sentence), but the
English translation is simply put as

> "Teacher, there's something I want to ask you."

Is this just something missing from the translation or does ～が here have a
different meaning?




が is used in this way fairly often to act as a 'softener' by implying
something like "there's something I want to ask, but I don't know if it's
okay/you're busy/etc". It's just a way of making your question less
impressing/more polite.

I suppose the reason why it's not often translated into English is that it
doesn't really carry the meaning of "but" explicitly, it's just a way of
making the request softer. If you translated it with the "but" in an English
sentence I wouldn't think it was because the person is just trying to be
polite, but they actually have some real reservations about asking that
question.




が is used in this way fairly often to act as a 'softener' by implying
something like "there's something I want to ask, but I don't know if it's
okay/you're busy/etc". It's just a way of making your question less
impressing/more polite.

I suppose the reason why it's not often translated into English is that it
doesn't really carry the meaning of "but" explicitly, it's just a way of
making the request softer. If you translated it with the "but" in an English
sentence I wouldn't think it was because the person is just trying to be
polite, but they actually have some real reservations about asking that
question.

