@RegDwigнt The conjunctive particle が (ga) is very often like English but, but it also has a range of non-contrastive usage but doesn't have.

What is Evercookie?

@RegDwigнt I never cease to be amazed by how creatively oneboxing munges the things it quotes. The ��2� at the end is new to me! :-)

@Robusto I think が is more neutral with respect to politeness, actually.

I think が is used often in both formal and informal language.

It's usually obvious how it's being used in context―「知らんがな」 is informal, 「次に予算の件ですが、……」 is formal

But I think けど is marked as somewhat colloquial because it's a contracted form

Even though the uncontracted forms are significantly less common today

Out of the four standard options けど・けれど・けども・けれども and the dialectal けんど, the longer it is, the more formal it is

I think が might have remained neutral for so long because it has only one form

(Both in terms of politeness and formality)

I can't really explain the distribution of けど versus が precisely, though

Sometimes I show up in ELU chat if I see Japanese being discussed :-)

I'm just a snailboat.

I have pet snails :-)

@FaheemMitha Yes

@Cerberus I wonder how it happened.

@FaheemMitha There's a picture of one of them :-)

I thought snailboat sounded cute, because it's like snail + sailboat, and snails and sailboats are cute.

@FaheemMitha They're common where I live :-)

California

I think most exotic snails would be illegal to have as pets here.

Well, a lot of them would be invasive species, eating people's plants, reproducing out of control, and displacing native species.

And people release animals, sometimes on purpose, sometimes accidentally.

I think if you tried to use a passionate as a noun phrase, most of the time people would think you forgot to say the actual noun at the end. They might ask: "A passionate what?"