Korean Language Basics

Categories: Off-topic

Introduction

I’m learning Korean at the moment, and wanted to share some of the things I have learned so far. In particular, most tutorials start with the basics and build up step by step - and that’s great, but I personally like to have at least an overview (the big picture) before diving into the details. This article covers those basics in less than an hour. This is not intended to be a Korean language tutorial or course, just an overview - and one from an amateur. Please skim this as an intro, then go use a proper course!

Korean is a great language to learn. The Korean culture is interesting, and (for someone from a European culture) is a gateway to other east asian cultures and languages. It also seems to me to be (suprisingly) a relatively easy language for an English speaker; despite being completely unrelated to western languages it still has many familiar grammatical constructs: an alphabet, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, possessives, etc.

One slightly tricky part of Korean is that it has lots of short words; changing a single letter in any word almost always produces a valid word with a different meaning (ie the language has low redundancy). It also tends to reuse words for very different meanings in different contexts. This does make the language very compact, but the brain needs to work harder sometimes to figure out which meaning applies. Korean is probably a good language for puns..

Another unfortunate aspect is the concept of “politeness levels” which affects many parts of the language and adds a lot of unnecessary (IMO) complexity. But who’s perfect?

Contents

The Alphabet

Despite first appearances, Korean is written in a way not much different from English; it use an alphabet of about the same size, has vowels and consonants, has syllables, and is reasonably phonetic (much better than English!).

Of course, the alphabet does use different characters and it is necessary to learn them, but they are elegantly simple shapes. Learning the alphabet and the corresponding sound for each letter takes a week or two, no more. To be precise, the alphabet consists of 19 consonants, 14 vowels, and 7 dipthong-vowels for a total of 40 symbols - but many are variants of a base form.

Because Korean is mostly phonetic (each letter has a consistent sound), it is generally possible to correctly pronounce a word just from seeing its written form. It also means that having heard a word, you have a good chance of guessing how it is written. There are exceptions, but far fewer than in English. Some Korean letters have a sound that directly corresponds with an English letter, for example ㄴ is very similar to the English letter n and ㅗ is pronounced very much like a standalone o (eg “o’clock”). Some correspond to a sound that in English we write with more than one letter, eg ㅣ is pronounced exactly like ee and ㅛ sounds very much like “yo” (as in “yo, man!”). A few letters are trickier, with sounds that don’t quite match anything in English; ㅂ is somewhere between a p and a b while ㄷ is somewhere between a t and a d. In short, learning correct pronunciation is not trivial, but also not truly hard - certainly no harder than learning to speak Spanish with an acceptable accent.

Letters do sometimes change their sound depending upon context.

Like European languages, letters are grouped into syllables. However what is special about Korean is that the letters in each syllable are joined together into a “syllable block”, sometimes by joining letters horizontally and sometimes by stacking letters on top of each other vertically. The result looks initially something like Chinese or Japanese but is quite different; with only a little practice it is easy to join letters or to pick apart a block into its separate letters.

Each syllable consists of either

  • (consonant, vowel) – about 50% of the time
  • (consonant, vowel, consonant) – about 40% of the time, or
  • (consonant, vowel, consonant, consonant) – about 10% of the time

ie every syllable contains exactly one vowel.

Every vowel is either “horizontal” (tall and thin) or “vertical” (short and wide). When horizontal then it is written (horizontally) next to the initial consonant and the following consonants (if any) are written on the next row. When vertical then it is written (vertically) below the initial consonant (ie on row 2) and the following consonants (if any) are written on yet another row. The maximum “width” of a syllable is therefore 2 characters, and the maximum height is 3 rows. This also means that the letters in a syllable are read left-to-right and top-to-bottom.

A syllable that “wants to” begin with a vowel-sound uses the consonant ㅇ as its first letter (which is silent when at the start of a syllable) and thus syllables always have at least 2 characters. These (relatively common) leading circles give Korean writing a distinctive appearance (compared to Japanese or Chinese for example).

The consonant(s) following a vowel (if any) are called a “batchim” - ie any syllable except those of form (consonant, vowel) has a “batchim”. These have some effects on pronunciation and verb conjugation; details are discussed later.

When hand-writing Korean, choosing the right size for letters is a little tricky; a letter within a 2-row syllable should be half as high as when written in a 1-row syllable.

Text is laid out just as in English - syllables are written left to right within a line, lines are top to bottom within a page, and pages are front to back within a document. This isn’t true for Japanese!

There are no uppercase or lowercase versions of letters. However each of the letters ㅈㅊㅅㅎ (roughly corresponding to “ch”, “tsh”, “s”, and “h”) can be drawn in two different ways.

A few letters look like a “doubled” form of a simpler letter (ㅃㅉㄸㄲㅆ). These are still treated as a single letter, and take up the same amount of space (each part is written half as large).

Some pairs of vowels combine to form what is effectively one letter - ie in those rules about (consonant, vowel, consonant) etc., the vowel can be a dipthong-vowel-pair. These always consist of one vertical and one horizontal vowel, so don’t change the rules regarding layout of syllable blocks - they just occupy both possible positions. Not all pairs are possible; only 7 combinations are actually used. In most cases the sound of the resulting combination is like quickly pronouncing both parts - though some combinations have their own distinct sound.

Unlike some asian languages, Korean is not “tonal”, ie the meaning of a letter or word does not change depending on pitch or accent.

Numbers are written using European symbols (also known as “arabic numerals”..). Like English, numbers can also be written as words (equivalent to “ten”, “twenty-three” etc in English).

Fortunately, when typing Korean on a keyboard, the rules for combining letters into syllables are consistent enough that the computer will automatically build the correct blocks. And the fact that there are only 33 different characters (ignoring the dipthongs) means that keyboards are similar to English ones; English actually needs 26 upper-case and 26 lower-case letters so the Korean alphabet is smaller. A Korean keyboard puts the 26 most commonly used letters on the “main” layout, just like English, with the remaining 7 letters (the 5 double-consonants plus ㅒ and ㅖ) accessed via the shift key. Dipthongs are formed by typing their components out as separate letters and letting the computer figure out that they need to be combined. Cleverly, the consonants are on the left side of the keyboard while the vowels are on the right, making typing most commonly left-right-left-right-left-right.

Because there isn’t a 1:1 correspondence between the sounds of letters in Korean and English, it is best to learn the Korean alphabet early and then to read and write Korean using its native alphabet rather than trying to use English equivalents (“romanized Korean spelling”). You’ll need to learn the Korean alphabet anyway if you ever want to read street-signs or restaurant menus and, because English is so un-phonetic, any Korean word could be written in a dozen different ways in English while a written english-ified spelling can be pronounced a dozen different ways with only one of them being correct. There are “official phonetic mappings” from Korean sounds to the latin alphabet, but they are non-trivial to learn and you’ll seldom see these in Korea. And yes, this article does generally give pronunciation “approximations” in the English alphabet - but that’s only because this is for absolute beginners. Just learn the alphabet and its corresponding sounds!

Punctuation

Just like western languages, spaces are used to separate words (although they can be a little hard to spot until you are familiar with the letters). In addition, the western full-stop, question-mark and exclamation mark are used - and in the same way.

Quote-marks and commas are also used, although less commonly and in a slightly different way.

As noted above, Korean does not have upper/lowercase letters.

Nouns

Nouns (the names of concrete things and abstract concepts) work exactly as in English. Like English, and unlike the majority of European languages, nouns do not have “genders” (and if you don’t know what that means, don’t worry).

The plural form of any noun can be formed just by appending a single syllable (들 - roughly pronounced “durl”). There are (as far as I know) no exceptions - much nicer than in English where adding “s” or “es” is often but not always right. However the plural suffix is typically omitted in situations where it is implied by context.

Noun Markers and Cases

Human language is mostly discussions about what is happening, has happened, or will happen - ie there is an action at the core of every sentence. We call these words that describe an action a verb. When using a verb we always need to specify who or what is doing the action (the “actor” aka the subject of the sentence). In addition, most verbs act on something (the “target” of the verb, aka the object of the sentence).

Examples of verbs are:

  • to sleep - just requires a subject (what is sleeping), eg “the dog sleeps” (and yes, sleeping is an action!)
  • to dance - just requires a subject (what is dancing), eg “the bird dances”
  • to eat - requires a subject (what is eating) and an object (what is being eaten)
  • to watch - requires a subject (what is watching) and an object (what is being watched)

These subject/object words are “nouns” - words that specify concepts, things, animals, or people.

Many European languages make the role of each element in a sentence clear by allocating a “case” to each part (typically called nominative, accusative, and dative); the “nominative” case is allocated to the actor, the “accusative” and “dative” cases are used for the target(s) of the verb. English doesn’t use cases as extensively as some other European languages, but we can see it in sentences such as “He watched him”. The words “I/he/she” are used for nominative (ie the “actor” in a sentence) while “me/him/her” are used for other cases (the “target” of a verb). Apart from these special cases, English does not generally modify words to indicate their role; instead the roles of the elements in a sentence must be deduced from word order and context.

Consider the English sentence “the cat eats the bird” - clear what is the actor/subject (doing the action) and what is the target/object (what the action is applied to)? Now what about the sentence “the bird eats the cat”? Relative position is clearly important - the word before the verb has a different role (actor/subject) than the word after the verb (target/object).

In Korean, the general principles are the same; sentences are built around verbs and there is a noun specifying what is doing the action, often a noun that specifes what the action is being done to, and sometimes additional nouns too (though these cases aren’t described in this section). However in Korean the verb always goes at the end of the sentence (or at least at the end of a phrase). The roles of the other nouns in the sentence are then indicated not by position but simply and unambiguously by appending a marker syllable to each noun to indicate whether it is the subject (actor) or the object (target).

The sentence “The cat eats the bird” therefore becomes “cat+subjectmarker bird+objectmarker eats”. We’ll talk about the lack of “the” later.

Actually, Korean sentences do normally put the actor/subject first and the target/object second. However the markers allow this to be reversed, if really desired, without changing the meaning of the sentence (unlike English). The use of these markers removes much of the complexity that occurs in some languages which instead use cases and genders - pronouns, articles, and adjectives don’t need to “agree” with the role/case they have in the sentence.

There are two variants of each marker, depending on whether the word they are appended to ends in a vowel or not (just to make pronunciation flow better). These marker syllables (noun suffixes) are:

  • Subject: 이 / 가
  • Object: 을 / 를

There is, however, a problem that occurs in any language: we often talk about the same subject (actor) for several sentences in a row. It quickly becomes tiring to repeat the original noun though. For example: “My brother likes music. My brother likes sports. My brother dislikes reading.”. In English we solve this by using placeholder words he/she/it to refer to “the current topic of conversation”, and so can say “My brother likes music. He likes sport. He dislikes reading.”. Korean deals with the same problem in a similar way, but even more efficiently - they just leave out the he/she/it completely. Any time you see a sentence that doesn’t have any subject/actor (ie no noun with the subject-marker attached to it) then it is the default subject, ie the “current topic”, which is doing the action. And while in English the “current topic” must be deduced from context, Korean avoids the guesswork by having a special marker syllable that clearly indicates when a noun becomes the new “current topic” - ie the “default actor” for later verbs. This is called the “topic marker”.

As with the subject and object marker, the topic marker is a pair of symbols; which one is used depends on whether the last syllable of the word it is attached to ends in a consonant (has a batchim) or ends in a vowel (no batchim). The markers are:

  • 은 / 는

In Korean we can therefore write: “My brother+topicmarker likes music. Likes sport. Dislikes reading.”. In the first sentence the topic-marker acts very much like the subject-marker. However unlike the subject-marker it allows that noun to be implicitly referenced in the following sentences.

Actually, the topic-marker is more commonly used than the subject-marker. Even when talking about something for just one sentence, it is common to use the topic-marker. And because it’s usually possible to choose either the topic or subject marker to refer to the actor of a sentence, choosing the subject-marker often indicates some emphasis on the subject, something like the difference between “I chopped down the cherry tree” vs “It was I who chopped down the cherry tree”. The second sentence puts more attention on the subject, and using the Korean subject-marker often has the same effect.

Examples of places where the subject marker should be used (instead of the topic) include:

  • when the exact identity of the subject is being clarified: “Who is dancing? Sam (subject) is dancing.”
  • when mentioning something “in passing” which is not “the ongoing topic of the conversation”
  • when a sentence has more than one subject: “The band played and the audience danced”.

Topic-markers always occur at the start of a sentence. Another way of thinking about them is translating them as “As for (topic), ….” or “Regarding (topic), …”. The rest of the initial sentence (the one with the topic marker) can then be considered a separate sentence whose verb has no matching subject (actor) - and so the default topic (which was just specified) is used.

The fact that a topic-marker sets a “default” perhaps explains why:

  • the subject-marker emphasises the subject: it’s overriding the default topic - ie there is something important about this subject
  • a sentence using a topic marker isn’t emphasising the subject: it can be seen as first setting the default subject, and then letting the next verb use that default.
  • a subject-marker can occur multiple times in a sentence: a subject is needed for each verb

So far, this discussion has been considering markers only in combination with action verbs, ie verbs which do something (to go, to eat, to see, etc) and therefore have something doing them (subject) and (usually) something they act on (object). Korean has another category of verbs called “descriptive verbs” which describe things or associate properties with things eg “to be large” or “to be hot”. These verbs don’t use the object-marker but sometimes are used with both a topic-marker and subject-marker; see section “Descriptive Verbs and Topic/Subject Markers” below.

In many languages the verb “to be” is special and has its own rules. It’s true in English - and true in Korean too. It’s tempting to translate a sentence like “I am a student” as “I+subjectmarker student+objectmarker am”. However no marker is used with the noun that is the “object” of the Korean verb to-be (pronouned “ida”/”eeda”) - you just run the noun and the verb directly together like one word. Our example is effectively “I+subjectmarker student-am”. In fact, I like to think of “ida” not as a verb but as a suffix that can turn any noun into a verb: teacher+ida becomes the verb “to-be-a-teacher”, cat+ida becomes the verb “to-be-a-cat”, Sam+ida becomes the verb “to-be-Sam”, etc. The reason why no “object marker” is required in these cases then becomes obvious. It’s the only verb in Korean that does this - not even the verb “to not be” has this special behaviour.

The 은/는 (“urn/nurn”) suffix has (at least) two other unrelated uses (see later for details):

  • adjectives as noun modifiers: “the small cat eats meat” is 작은 고양이는 고기를 먹어요
  • one form of the progressive tense: “I am eating bread” is 저는 빵을 먹는 중이에요

Similarly, 을/를 have some other unrelated uses:

  • the future tense: “will eat” is 먹을 거예요
  • verbs-as-nouns: “watching” as a noun is 보기를

There are other marker-like suffixes, for example those that indicate locations (eg “at home”), or being the recipient (eg “to me”). See the section on “particles” for more info.

Pronouns

Just like English, there are words for “I/you/he/she”.

However Korean has the concept of “politeness levels” or “formality levels” which are very important. Some pronouns therefore have two forms, one being more “humble” with respect to the listener than the other. The concept of “politeness levels” is discussed further later.

The available words are:

  • I: 저 (humble) or 나
  • we: 저희 (humble) or 우리
  • you (singular): 그쪽, 당신 (humble but very seldom used; see below) or 너 (casual)
  • you (plural): 여러분 (can also be used as a formal singular form)
  • he: 그 - literally “that” - see section on this and that
  • she: 그녀 - literally “that woman” (written only)
  • they: 그들 - literally “that plural”

However Korean commonly omits pronouns whenever they can be deduced from context, eg “do you like it?” can drop the “you” and “it” and just become “like?”.

The use of “you” is tricky when combined with Korean’s concept of politeness/formality. When addressing someone directly, any question implicitly includes “you”; “like the food?” obviously means “do you like the food?”. Therefore in Korean the “you” is usually just omitted in questions. In other cases, it is often replaced by something else - for example “you are correct” becomes “correct”, “that is correct”, “(addressee-personal-name) ssi is correct”, or “(title) nim is correct”. The “ssi” (씨) is something like “Mr/Mrs” (but not gender-specific) and the personal-name is used at least partly because there are so few distinct family-names in Korean. The “nim” is something like “honorable”. See the section on politeness. However that “ssi” is written as a separate word (and any marker is then attached to it, and not the name) while “nim” is appended to the title (part of the word).

Even when talking informally, the informal you-form (너) is appropriate only between close friends or relatives of similar age, or adults to children.

The word 당신 (“dangsheen”) is sometimes used in impersonal contexts such as speeches or advertising. However addressing someone directly using this can be considered impolite; name-ssi or title-nim should be used. Couples sometimes use this word in the sense of “darling” or “honey”.

The word 그쪽 (“kurchok”) may be used to address someone when you just don’t have any other option, eg don’t know their name or title. But an alternative should be found as soon as possible.

The terms he/she are actually fairly rarely used, and can be impolite unless referring to someone whose identity you really don’t know. In general it is better to initially use the person’s name plus the topic-marker, then the subject can “default” to that person - ie it isn’t necessary to repeat their name over and over. In English, he/she are used to refer to “that person we are talking about” - and Korean does this by using the “topic marker” to make that person explicit and then simply omitting the subject in following sentences - ie letting those sentences default to the “current topic”.

The term “it” isn’t really used either. As with he/she above, “it” refers to “the thing we are talking about” and the topic-marker/default-subject approach replaces this in most cases. There are words for “this” or “that” (see later).

Korean does not have separate words for different pronoun roles/cases (I/me, he/him, she/her, they/them, etc). Instead one of the “marker syllables” described above is appended to any pronoun depending on its role in a sentence. Sentences such as “I like ..” or “I go” will start with the pronoun for “I” (using appropriate politeness level) followed by the “subject marker” because in this case “I” is the subject of the sentence. A sentence such as “.. with me” or “.. to me” will contain the pronoun for “I” followed by the “object marker”. Well, actually as mentioned earlier, the “topic marker” is often used instead of the “subject marker”, particularly when talking about the same thing for multiple sentences - and as “I” is one of the most popular topics of conversation, the sound “chaw-nurn” is heard very often.

One special note about the pronouns “I” and “you”: when used with the subject-marker they change form.

  • 저 (I humble) + 가 becomes 제가 (“chaw+ga” becomes “che-ga”)
  • 나 (I neutral) + 가 becomes 내가 (“nah” + “ga” becomes “nay-ga”)
  • 너(you neutral) + 가 becomes 네가 Theoretically this means that “naw” + “ga” become “neh-ga”, but as a special case this is pronounced “ni-gah” to avoids confusion with the “neutral I” form above (vowels ㅐ and ㅔ sound very similar in modern Korean).

Articles (“A” and “The”)

English uses “the” or “a” before nouns to specify whether we are talking about a specific item, or any item of that type, as does German/French/Italian/Spanish. However there are many languages which don’t use this approach - and Korean is one of them.

There are words for “this” and “that” if you need to specify something within eyesight. And you can use the word “that” if you really want to make clear that you are talking about a specific object (presumably from an earlier part of the conversation). The words “it” and “that” are identical..

Otherwise the item in question is deduced from context, eg “I bought book about Korea. I lost book.” where the last sentence implicitly refers to that specific book. Although actually, it would probably look more like “I bought book about Korea. Lost.” where in the second sentence both the subject (I) and the object (the book) are implicit.

Possessives

In English it’s common to say that one noun “belongs to” another noun, eg:

  • my shoe
  • the child’s toy
  • the dog’s colour

Korean possessives work identically - you just add a suffix to a noun to indicate it “owns” the following noun - ie this requires a pair of nouns. That suffix is always 의 (“ui/ooee”).

Possessive forms are very often used with pronouns - in fact so often that there are some common “short forms”:

  • 저 (I humble) + 의 -> 저의 (my) with short form 제 - eg 제 이름 (my name)
  • 나 (I neutral) + 의 -> 나의 (my) with short form 내 - eg 내 폰 (my phone)
  • 너의 (you casual) + 의 -> 너의 (your) with short form 네 (but see note below about pronunciation)

These short forms are identical to the ones used with the 가 (“ga”) subject marker as described above. When followed by “ga”, then the word is just a simple pronoun; when followed by a noun then it indicates possession. Just as with the “ga” forms, syllable 네 (your) is actually pronounced “ni” to avoid confusion with 내 (my).

The possessive “our” can be formed by combining 우리(“uri” meaning “we”) and 의 (no short form). However for this pronoun only, it is optional - ie 우리(“we”) on its own can also mean “our”.

The other pronoun possessives (eg “he” -> “his”) do not have short forms.

Korean tends to use “our” more often than “my”; when speaking about anything which you share with others, use “our” - eg “our mother” instead of “my mother”, “our house” instead of “my house”. Only things which are exclusively your property should be referred to with “my” - eg “my shirt”.

And at the start of sentences, “my” is often left out completely. Instead of “My friend .. “ or “My brother ..” it is common to just say “Friend ..” or “Brother ..” with the (my) being implicit.

Verbs - General Principles

Korean verbs are very similar to those in English. The infinitive (“dictionary”) form of a verb always ends in 다 (roughly sounds like “da”).

There are generally two categories of verbs in Korean: action-verbs (which do things) and description-verbs (which describe things). However they have a lot in common; this section describes the common behaviours and the differences will be discussed later.

English verbs change form depending upon who is doing them (“I run”/”he runs”) and the tense (“I run”/”I ran”). And these changes are sometimes unpredictable/irregular. In other European languages, verb endings can be even more complicated.

Korean verbs change suffix depending on tense, politeness level, and mode but do not depend upon who is performing them. And the vast majority of verbs are regular. There are a few forms to learn, but it’s generally simpler than in most other European languages.

Tenses are: past, present, future.

Politeness levels relevant for beginners are (roughly speaking):

  • formal (aka formal high) - used for talking to people in authority, strangers, customers, elders, or otherwise showing extra respect
  • plain (aka formal low) - written texts from third-person viewpoint (as neither “speaker” not reader is of a known “level of respect”)
  • polite (aka informal high) - normal chat between colleagues or acquaintances of similar status
  • casual (aka informal low) - between good friends, couples, and family siblings of similar age

Modes are:

  • declarative - statements about the current state of things or the general state of things, eg “the weather is hot”, or “I like Kimchi”.
  • inquisitive - for asking questions
  • propositive - for making suggestions
  • imperative - for giving commands

The “progressive tense” aka “continuing tense” used to express things like “I am watching” or “I am walking” is built using a helper verb, not a specific verb conjugation - somewhat similar to how English uses “am” (to-be) here. This is described later.

The most important conjugations:

  • present casual declarative -> verb stem + adapter
  • present polite declarative -> verb stem + adapter + “-yo”
  • present plain declarative -> verb stem + adapter + “-nda”
  • present formal declarative -> verb stem + “-mnida” or “-surmnida”

where the “verb stem” is the infinitive minus the “da” ending, and the “adapter” depends upon the ending letters of the verb stem. Because the verb-stem-plus-adapter is a starting point for so many kinds of expressions, some books call this the “basic form” (and I think that’s a very useful concept). Speaking “casually” (to friends) uses verbs in this “basic” form directly.

The rules for choosing the right adapter are slightly complicated - but once learned are at least consistent for almost all verbs.

By the way, note those “-nda” and “-mnida” endings. These initially sound like an infinitive verb itself (ends in “-da”), but are not. While all infinitive verbs end in “da”, not everything that ends in “da” is an infinitive verb!

There are similar rules for building past-formal-declarative, past-polite-declarative, future-formal-declarative, future-polite-declarative, etc.

There is also “honorific speech” - a collection of grammatical forms to show extra respect. This includes a verb suffix which is inserted before the “da” of the original verb - and this is conjugated instead of the original verb ending (see later for a dedicated section on honorific speech). In fact, there are several such verb suffixes and potentially multiple can be appended concurrently - however regardless of how many suffixes are added, only the last one affects the conjugation.

The mode of the sentence also plays a role in conjugating verbs. As an example, when asking a question in present formal form, verbs must end in “-mnika” instad of “-mnida”.

This all sounds rather complicated, but it’s not too bad. Most courses concentrate first on learning the “present polite declarative” form. This is unfortunately one of the more complicated conjugations (the “adapters” come in several forms) but once that is mastered it is pretty simple to change the endings to form other useful structures such as the past-tense or “polite requests” (see helper verbs chuda, boda).

Sometimes verbs modify other verbs. In English, we say “to want to go”, eg “I” + “to want” (conjugated) + “to go” (infinitive) gives “I want to go”. Korean works similarly, but in a different word order: “I” + “to go (stem)” + “ko” + “want” (conjugated). Similar structures are used to express “to have to” and related concepts.

The Korean verb “to do” (하다 - pronounced “hada”) can be used to turn many nouns into a verb, eg:

  • “love” (noun) + “to do” -> “to do love” -> “to love”
  • “speech” (noun) + “to do” -> “to do speech” -> “to speak”

The verb “to exist” (있다 - pronounced “itda”) can also be combined with various nouns to form a new verb. Examples:

  • “flavour” (noun) + “to exist” -> “to be tasty” (맛있다)
  • “fun/entertainment” (noun) + “to exist” -> “to be fun/entertaining/enjoyable” (재미있다)

Grammatically, both these -hada and -itda verbs can be seen as either one word or as noun+verb. In the second case, it is therefore possible to put an object-marker after the noun ie “in the middle”.

In a sentence that has multiple verbs, only the last one (the one at the end of the sentence) is fully conjugated. Depending on the particular grammatical construct being used, other verbs may just use the stem or use the “basic form”.

Action Verbs

Action verbs are words which describe (obviously) actions, eg “to go”, “to eat”, “to see”. They always have a subject (the person or thing doing the action) and usually have an object (the thing affected by the action).

There isn’t much more to say about these, as they are very similar in purpose to English verbs, and the previous section has mostly described how they work.

Descriptive Verbs vs Adjectives

Overview

Adjectives in English describe attributes/properties of nouns. They can do this in three ways:

  1. as an assertion (“the house is old”)
  2. together with a “linking verb” (“the food smells good”, “the water feels cold”).
  3. as a noun modifier (eg “the old house …”, “the good food …”, “the cold water …”)

Korean works somewhat similarly, but is not identical. It has two categories of verbs:

  • “action” verbs which “do things”
  • “descriptive” verbs which “describe attributes of things”

These descriptive verbs serve the same purpose as English adjectives. Descriptive verbs mean “to be {in some state}” or “to have the property of {some attribute}”. As with other verbs, they end in “-da”.

The verbs meaning “to be (some thing)” (이다) and “to exist/have/be at (some location)” (있다) are descriptive verbs, and follow the rules described in this section.

Descriptive Verb Assertions

Case (1) simply requires conjugating the descriptive verb correctly; “the house is old” becomes “house + (subject-marker) + to-be-old (conjugated)”. The verb goes at the end of the sentence, as always in Korean.

Hhile the subject of an action verb is who/what is doing the action, the subject of a descriptive verb is what is being described. This can be the “current topic”, eg “Regarding the house, it is old”, instead of a noun+subject-marker.

House is 집 and “to be small” is 작다 so “the house is small” is 집이 작아요 (house + subject-marker + to-be-small-in-polite-form). The Korean verb “to be” isn’t involved here; that’s “built in” to the descriptive verb.

Some sentences including descriptive verbs effectively have two subjects. Instead of using (subject + object) markers as with action verbs, these instead use (topic + subject) markers. For example, “I think pizza is delicious” is expressed as “with regards to me (topic), pizza (subject) is-delicious”. As noted earlier, the very frequently-used verb 있다 (to exist/have/be-at) is a descriptive verb so sentences such as “I have an apple” uses both the topic and subject markers: with regards to me (topic), an apple (subject) exists.

Descriptive Verb Modifiers

Case (2) is formed in a similar way to English, but with a different word order. The English expression “bread smells good” is equivalent to “the smell of bread is good” and this is how it is said in Korean: “bread + subject-marker + smell (noun) + to-be-good (conjugated-descriptive-verb)”.

Descriptive Noun Modifiers

For case (3), the descriptive verb can be turned into a noun-modifier (adjective) by taking the verb stem and:

  • when it ends in ㄹ then replace that letter with ㄴ (eg to-be-far-away: 멀다 -> 먼)
  • when it ends in ㅂ then remove that letter and append syllable 운 (eg to-be-spicy: 맵다 -> 매운)
  • when it ends in a vowel then append letter ㄴ to the last syllable (eg to-be-slow: 느리다 -> 느린 or to-be-big: 크다 -> 큰)
  • when it ends in a consonant then append syllable 은 (eg to-be-small: 작다 -> 작은)

And yes, that last case (which is quite common) does look like a topic marker. It isn’t.

This resulting adjective always goes before the noun it describes (just like English).

Examples:

  • House is 집 and “to be small” is 작다 so “The small house ..” is 작은 집 ..
  • Dog is 개 and “to be large” is 크다 so “The big dog ..” is 큰 개 ..

Descriptive Verbs and Topic/Subject Markers

Descriptive verbs such as “to be large” or “to be hot” or “to be on (something)” don’t have an object as they don’t act on anything. However they can have multiple subjects. As an example, the verb “to exist” is a descriptive verb - effectively assigning to its subject the property of “existing” or “being at some place”; 여기에 사과가 있어요 means “there is an apple here” (here+location-marker apple+subject-marker exists). The same verb is also used to express “to have”: “I have an apple” is 저는 삭와가 있어요 - “I+topic-marker apple+subject-marker exists” or otherwise expressed, “with regards to me, an apple exists”. The verb “to be” and “to not be” are also descriptive verbs but “to be” is, as described earlier, a special case. You will, however, see this “topic + subject” combination with “to not be” - eg “I am not Korean”: 저는 한국사람이 아니에요.

A further complication is that some descriptive verbs are “compound verbs” consisting of either:

  • (noun) + (optional subject marker) + 있다 (ittda) or
  • (noun) + (optional subject marker) + 하다 (hada)

For example 재미 (가) 있다 (to have fun), or 맛 (이) 있다 (to be delicious). Such verbs (already) effectively have “two subjects” - the thing it is describing and the noun that defines what property it has. The thing being described can be specified via the “current topic”. A sentence like “This movie is fun” can become “With regards to this movie (topic), fun (subject) exists”. Similarly “This pizza is delicious” can become “With regards to this pizza (topic), flavour (subject) exists”. In this case, a subject-marker can be appended to the “property” noun - but it is optional. However it is also possible to use the subject-marker to specify the thing being described, eg “For this movie (subject) fun exists” or “For this pizza (subject) taste exists”. As Korean phrases never include multiple subject markers, the optional one attached to the described property is always dropped. There are also cases where there are effectively three subjects, eg in “In my opinion, this movie is fun” or “In my opinion, pizza is delicious”. These use the topic-marker for the first part, and (as described above) the subject marker for the thing being described with no marker attached to the property.

Examples:

  • With regards to this movie, it is fun: 이 영화는 재미가 있어요 (with optional internal subject marker)
  • With regards to this movie, it is fun: 이 영화는 재미있어요 (without optional internal subject marker)
  • This movie is fun: 이 영화가 재미있어요 (internal subject marker not possible)
  • In my opinion, this movie is fun: 저는 이 영화가 재미있어요

To summarize:

  • In the simple case where there is just one thing involved (the thing “being described”), mark it with either the topic or subject marker
  • In the complex cases with two nouns, mark the thing being described with the subject marker, and the other with the topic marker
  • And if the verb is a compound one, and there is just one thing involved, and that thing is already the “current topic” then you can optionally get fancy and append a subject marker after the first part of the verb.

Using the Verb “to be”

The verb “to be” (“ida/eeda”) is also a kind of descriptive verb. However it is somewhat different from English, being used only to express that one thing is equivalent to another, or “belongs to the category of ..”. Examples: “My name (xx) is.” (equivalent), “He student is.” (belongs to the category of) or “That coffee is.”. In these sentences, a topic or subject marker is applied to the first noun (“He” or “That”) and the second noun (the one just before the verb) does not get any marker at all. Examples:

  • 그는 학생이에요
  • 그것은 커피예요

This can be thought of as forming a “labelling verb” by concatenating any noun together with “ida” to form a new verb. Examples are “dog + to-be” forming a descriptive verb “to be a dog”, or “Sam + to-be” forming the descriptive verb “to-be-Sam”.

The verb “to not be” (“ahnida”) is not special in this way; as with any other descriptive verb, the thing it is describing must be expressed as a separate word with a subject-marker appended to it, eg “I(+topicmarker) student-am” but “I(+topicmarker) student(+subjectmarker) am-not”.

As described above, for other cases where English would use the verb “to be” (eg “He is tired” or “The car is fast”) instead conjugate the appropriate descriptive verb (to-be-tired or to-be-fast). Using “to be” in these cases would effectively mean “He is equivalent to tiredness” or “The car belongs to the category of speed” - clearly not what is desired.

In many cases Korean tries to simplify speech by producing a pleasant vowel-consonant-vowel-consonant sequence within a word (between words, not so much). And unlike other verbs, “ida” becomes part of the previous word - a suffix rather than a separate word. In some “politeness levels” there are therefore two different versions of the verb depending on whether it is being attached to something that ends in a consonant (has a batchim) or a vowel (has no batchim).

  • casual speech level: 이야 after a consonant (eg 잭이야, “it’s a book”) or 야 after a vowel (eg 개야, “it’s a dog”)
  • polite speech level: 이에요 after a consonant (eg 잭이에요, “it’s a book”) or 예요 after a vowel (eg 개예여요, “it’s a dog”)
  • formal speech level: always appends 입니다, eg 잭입니다 or 개입니다

The syllables 야 (“yah”) and 예 (“yay”) do “start with a vowel” (ignoring the preceding silent consonant) but that leading “y” sound flows nicely from a preceding vowel rather like a consonant. For the formal level, the tongue just has to deal with that awkward vowel->”eemnida” transition from time to time.

And yes, this is all very different from other verbs (irregular). The verb “to be” seems to be special in many languages.

Locations

When specifying a location that something is at, or someone is going to, the marker 에 is appended. When specifying a location that someone or something is coming from then 에서 is used. And when specifying the location at which some event is taking place, 에서 is also used.

Examples:

  • 저는 집에 있어요 - I am at home (I+topicmarker home+locationmarker exist-at)
  • 저는 집에 갔어요 - I went home (I+topicmarker home+locationmarker went)
  • 어디에서 왔어요? - Where did (you) come from (where+locationmarker2 came) - same as english “where do you come from?”
  • 우리는 식당에서 먹었어요 - We ate at a restaurant (we+topicmarker restaurant+locationmarker2 ate)

The location marker is also with relative positions, eg “on top of”, “beside”, etc. There is a set of words describing relative locations, eg above, below, beside, in-front, behind, in, etc. Combining (“place” + relative-position + location-marker) gives a new place that the subject of the sentence is then “at” - eg 개가 문 앞에 있어요 (dog+subjectmarker door in-front+locationmarker exists-at) says that the dog is at the location “in front of the door”.

It is possible to swap the order within the sentence of the location and subject parts to emphasise the subject (who/what) or the location - whichever comes first is the more important. It’s even possible to emphasis the location further by moving it to the front of the sentence and appending a topic-marker, ie “with regards to this location…”.

Compound Nouns

In English it is possible to combine nouns to form new ones. For example:

  • apple + juice => applejuice : juice of (extracted from) an apple
  • car + seat => car seat: a seat in, or for use in, a car.
  • train + ticket => train ticket : a ticket valid for use in a train

Exactly the same thing can be done in Korean:

  • 기차 (train) + 표 (ticket) -> 기차표 : a ticket valid for use in a train

This concatenation can be used for job-descriptions, much as we do in English - for example “Detective Jones ..”. However in Korean the word order is reversed: “Jones detective ..”.

This is related to possessives or adjectives, but somewhat different. However sometimes these “compound nouns” can replace the use of adjectives; for example in Korean “the white cat” can be expressed using the adjective form of “white” or the noun for “the colour white”. See later for more details.

Superlatives

English has special grammar forms to express comparisons such as “loud/louder/loudest” or “big/bigger/biggest”. Korean simply uses modifiers 더 (“more”) and 가장 (“most”), ie “loud/more loud/most loud” or “big/more big/most big”.

Verb Extensions

Verbs are extended/modified by starting with one of the 3 following “derivatives” of the verb’s dictionary form:

  • the verb stem
    • eg formal-present tense, progressive tense ( 고 있다), honorific speech, “to want to” ( 고 십다), verbs-as-nouns (기를)
  • the verb basic form
    • eg informal-present tense, past tense, imperative, “to try to” ( 보다), “to please do for me” ( 주시다)
  • the verb “L-form”
    • eg future tense, “to be able to” ( 수 있다)

Some of these topics are described below.

Making the verb stem is trivial: just remove the “da” suffix from the infinitive/dictionary form.

Deriving the basic form of a verb from its infinitive/dictionary form is somewhat complicated - too much for this intro. However some examples are:

  • 가다 (“kada”, “to go”) -> 가
  • 먹다 (“mawkda”, “to eat”) -> 먹어
  • 오다 (“oda”, “to come”) -> 와
  • 하다 (“hada”, “to do”) -> 해 (a special case)

The “L-form” (a term I’ve invented here) is also a little too complicated to describe here, though it is very similar to the “descriptive-verb to adjective” process described earlier but with an “L” instead of an “N”. Some examples are:

  • 가다 (“kada”, “to go”) -> 갈
  • 하다 (“hada”, “to do”) -> 할 (not a special case - just same as above)
  • 먹다 (“mawkda”, “to eat”) -> 먹을
  • 맵다 (“maepda”, “to be spicy”) -> 매울

The Progressive Tense

The declarative mode allows statements about things “in general”, eg “I cook eggs” means “I often cook eggs” or “I can cook eggs”. The form “I am cooking eggs” is the progressive tense (also known as the “continuing tense”).

This can be expressed in two different ways: with .. 고 있다 or with .. 는 중 이다.

In the first form, you take the verb stem and simply follow it with 고 + the conjugated form of verb 있다/to-exist.

In the second form, you take the verb stem and follow it with 는 + 중 (“chung”) + the conjugated form of verb 이다/to-be. However there is one quirk: if the verb stem ends in ㄹ then that is removed.

These forms are mostly equivalent. However when referring to natural phenomena (eg “it is raining”) or emotions (eg “I am laughing”), the first form should be used. The second form also has special behaviour when combined with “hada verbs”.

Helper Verbs

There are a few verbs that can be combined with other verbs.

The verb 하다 (“hada” - to do) has already been discussed; it can be used to build verbs from nouns (eg love + to-do -> to love).

The verb 있다 (“ittda” - to exist) can be used to express “(somebody or thing) can (some action)” via “verb L-form” + 수 (“su”) + 있다 (“ittda”) (conjugated)”. To express “I cannot (some action)” just use 없다 (“awbta” - to not exist) instead of “ittda”.

The verb “ittda” can also be used as described in the section on “the progressive tense”.

The verb 싶다 (“shipda” - to want to) is used by taking the stem of some verb, adding 고, and then adding the conjugated form of shipda to form things like “to want to go”, “to want to buy”, etc. In this case, only the verb “shipda” is conjugated.

The verb 주다 (“chuda”), when used alone, means “to give”. However it can also be used with other verbs to request somebody to do something or to express gratitude for some action. A request is formed by using (some-verb-basic-form + chuda-conjugated-in-imperative) eg .. 말해 주세요 (“.. malhay chusayo”) meaning “(speak) (do-action-please)” or “please speak/say ..”. It can also be used to express gratitude: “you did (action) so thank you” ie “thank you for doing (action)”.

The verb 보다 (“poda”), when used alone, means “to see/watch” but can be used to form expressions meaning “try (some action)” or “see what happens when (action)”. In the past tense it can mean “I tried (action)” or “I have done (action)”. It can also be used to soften a command; in English the command “do X” can be softened to the suggestion “try X” and “poda” can do the same in Korean. It uses the same form as “chuda” above, ie “(verb-basic-form) + (poda-conjugated)”.

This and That

Technically, the words for this/that are also adjectives - they modify a noun. We have:

  • this (a thing near the speaker): 이 (“ee”)
  • that (a thing near the listener): 그 (“gur”)
  • that over there (a thing not near speaker or listener): 저 (“chaw”)

As with an adjective, these words need to be followed by the noun they modify. They can be followed by any noun, eg:

  • this (near me) apple
  • that (near you) book
  • that (over there) house

However they are often used with the word “thing”: 것 (“gawt”):

  • this thing near the speaker: 이것 (“eegawt”)
  • that thing near the listener: 그것 (“gurgawt”)
  • that thing over there (not near speaker or listener): 저것 (“chawgawt”)

Yes: 그것 is the same word used for “it”. And yes: 그 is the same word for “him”. And yes, 저 can mean I/me. And yes, 이 can also be a subject marker. The actual meaning needs to be deduced from context.

The word 것 (“gawt”) is actually used quite a lot in Korean; it is really a general placeholder for any physical object or even abstract concept. While in English we can use this/that without any object (eg “this is cold”) such an expression simply isn’t valid in Korean - either the full noun or “gawt” is required. As an example, “That is mine” becomes “That thing is my thing”. However 그, when used in the sense of “he” rather than “that”, does not need “gawt”: 그는 - with regards to him.

Adverbs

Despite their name, English adverbs enhance not only verbs but also adjectives or other adverbs with additional attributes such as “quickly”. In English they usually come before the word they modify, but can occasionally come afterward to add different “emphasis”, eg “he quickly cleaned the house”, “he turned quickly to the left”. Adjectives always apply to nouns, and adverbs never do.

Korean adverbs work just like in English, but always come before the word they qualify. As in English, they always have the same spelling (do not need to be conjugated).

Adverbs don’t apply to nouns, eg in “the quick fox” or “the fox is quick”, “quick” is an adjective while in “the fox ran quickly”, “quickly” is an adverb. There are many adjective/adverb pairs that have similar meaning (as with quick/quickly); sometimes the spelling is similar but sometimes the words are completely different. Because adverbs are not verbs, they do not end in “-da”.

Examples of adverbs:

  • 잘 (“zhal”) - well (cook well, sleep well)
  • 더 (“daw”) - more (buy more, see more)
  • 빨리 (“bballi”) - quickly (run quickly, give quickly)
  • 천천히 (“chawnchawnhee”) - slowly (speak slowly)
  • 조금 (“chogurm”) - a little (eat a little, speak a little)
  • 많이 (“mani”) - a lot (eat a lot, sell a lot)
  • 아주 (“ahchu”) - very/really (really like, really spicy)
  • 정말 (“zhawngmal”) - same as the above

Korean adverbs can also modify other adverbs, in which case they also come before the adverb they modify. This is just like English, eg “he very quickly ran” has identical structure in Korean.

Examples:

  • House very small-is (qualify a descriptive verb)
  • I Korean well speak (qualify an action verb)
  • I Korean very well speak (qualify adverb which qualifies a verb)

And note that the “hada” verbs can be considered either one verb or noun-plus-verb. Therefore adverbs can be placed before the whole thing, or just before the “hada” part (ie in the middle). As an example, the verb “to study” is “(study) + (hada)” and so “to study hard” is “study + hard (adverb) + hada (conjugated)”.

Politeness Levels

There are 7 politeness levels that affect Korean grammar. However only 3 are relevant for spoken Korean, and one for written language. The remainder are basically obsolete/archaic.

  • 하십시오체 (“Hashipshio-che”) - known as formal or formal-high, this level is used when talking to someone older than you, or with authority over you, or otherwise deserving extra respect. Waiters and shop attendants use this with customers. Strangers often address each other in this form.

  • 해라체 (“Haera-che”) - known as plain or formal-low, this can be used by adults talking to children or by children addressing each other, but is mostly encountered in written texts using the “third person viewpoint”. If you read any Korean books (including children’s books, or newspapers) then you’ll see this level often (ie see verbs conjugated in the corresponding way). Text such as “The night was dark. The policeman was tired.” is from an unknown person to a reader who isn’t really defined, so other levels can’t readily be chosen; instead the plain level is used.

  • 해요체 (“Haeyo-che”) - known as polite or informal-high, this level is used when talking to someone younger than you, or subordinate to you, or to acquaintances of the same age. However it can also be used with strangers at a pinch - particularly by foreigners; it’s not actively rude, just lacking in elegance.

  • 해체 (“Hae-che”) - known as casual, intimate, or informal-low, this is used between close friends or family members. In the present tense, verb conjugations are identical to the polite form but without the “-yo” suffix.

Interestingly, these level-names are the conjugation of the verb “hada” in the imperative in the relevant level, plus the suffix “che”.

Verbs are conjugated at a level depending on the addressee, ie the person being talked to.

As noted in the verb section:

  • formal present tense declarative ends in “-mnida”.
  • plain present tense declarative ends in “-nda”
  • polite present tense ends in “-yo”
  • casual present tense is the polite form without the “-yo” (except for the verb “ida”)

Any sentence should end with an appropriately polite form depending on addressee.

The speech levels used in a conversation aren’t always symmetrical; a young person will use formal speech when talking to an older one, and the older may reply using polite speech. This isn’t rude, it’s just how things are done. However if in doubt, it’s probably safer to use at least the same level of politeness as the person you are talking to in order not to imply that you see yourself as “in authority”.

As mentioned earlier, the 너 (“naw”) pronoun for “you” is very casual, and 당신 (“dangsheen”) has complicated implications. Instead, speakers avoid the use of “you” when addressing someone with respect. One option is to use the person’s name or title; when doing that, the suffix 님 (“nim”) must follow it: 선생 (teacher) becomes 선생님 (honorable teacher). Titles based on family role are also common, eg 할머니 (grandmother) becomes 할머니님 (“honorable grandmother”) - typically used for someone else’s grandmother rather than one’s own. This sounds weird in English, but is standard Korean usage (and Japanese too). Nim can also be used after a person’s name where it is similar to the English “Mr.” : “Park Seokmin nim”.

The honorific “ssi” (씨) can be used instead of “nim” between people of approximately equal status. It’s a touch of politeness/elegance/respect without being overly humble. While “nim” is appended to a name or title, “ssi” is a separate word.

Verbs can also be modified with “shi” (시) to show respect to the topic of conversation separately from the listener; it is also used for commands in the polite level. In this case, this syllable is appended to the verb stem before the the verb is conjugated - ie what is conjugated is that “shi” syllable instead of the last syllable of the verb stem. See the section on “honorific speech” for more details.

Note that 씨 and 시 are different.

You might see the word 존댓말 (“jondaemal”) which is “high speech” - all politeness levels from very-polite to moderate-polite. The alternative is 반말 (“banmal”) which is “low speech” - things used within a family or with very close friends.

See Wikipedia on Korean Speech Levels for more details.

Sentence Structure

Korean sentences have a word-order that is different from English. They typically have the form “subject object verb”, eg “I pizza eat”, “I home went”. More generally, sentences are typically structured “subject location time object verb”. However due to the use of “markers” for important nouns (subject, object, time, location, and others), sentences can be put together in just about any desired order - as long as the verb is at the end.

Korean sentences also tend to put the most important words at the end, with the least-informative (and most redundant) words moving to the start of the sentence. And as noted earlier, Korean often leaves out words where they are implied by the context; the candidates to leave out will be those words which are (or otherwise would be) near the start of the sentence.

English sentences often indicate the roles of words using word-ordering, eg “the cat ate the bird” is quite different from “the bird ate the cat”. As noted above, this problem doesn’t occur in Korean due to explicit subject and object markers.

Because most of the present tense polite verb suffixes end in “yo”, and verbs are always found at the ends of sentences, Korean has a distinct sound even if you don’t know the language - just listen for “yo” before each (inter-sentence) pause.

As an example of this structure, the sentence “the book is on the desk” is:

책은 책상 위에 있어요

which grammatically is:

Book (책) + subjectmarker (은) desk (책상) on-top (위)+ location-marker (에) verb-to-exist-at-in-polite-form (있어요)

English does sometimes use “sentence fragments” which do not have a verb, for example “A priceless masterwork!”. Korean does the same - and typically the syllable “yo” is tacked on the end of the last word to indicate this. Book chapters, or newspaper headlines, will often use sentence fragments, eg “The stolen painting”.

Verbs as Nouns (and vice versa)

It is common for a word to be both a verb and a noun. For example, in the sentence “I like pizza”, pizza is a noun and the object of the verb “to like”. However it is also possible to say “I like eating pizza”; here “eating” needs to be a noun and “eating pizza” is a “compound noun” (see earlier). The noun “eating” can be derived from the verb “to eat” in two ways:

  • verb-stem + 기 + 를 (not an object-marker!)
  • verb-stem + 극 + 것

And yes, in this first case 를 marks the object just like any normal noun in the role of “object”.

There are also a lot of nouns which are turned into verbs using “hada” as described earlier. Looking at it the other way, whenever you learn a “-hada” verb, you’ve also learned a noun. For these verbs, forget the “verb stem plus suffix” process above, and just remove the “hada” ending. Examples of nouns that can be combined with “hada”:

  • love (사랑)
  • exhaustion (피곤)
  • cares/worries (걱정)
  • (the act of) swimming (수영)
  • (the act of/art of) cooking (요리)

Particles

A particle is a piece of grammar that can be appended to a word to affect the meaning of the word or sentence. The topic/subject/object markers are particles, and there is quite a range of other useful ones including:

  • 은/는,이/가,을/를 - topic,subject,object markers as described earlier
  • 에 (“eh”) - appended to times to indicate “at”, or places to indicate “being-at” or “towards/in-the-direction-of”
  • 에서 (“ehsaw”) - appended to places to indicate “happens-at” or “from”
  • 부터 - appended to times to indicate “from”
  • 에게/한테 - appended to a person to indicate “to recipient” (eg “I give the ball to my brother”). See below for more.
  • 에게서 / 한테서 - appended to a person to indicate “from/provided-by”
  • 로/으로 - towards (direction) / with (tools/methods)
  • 도 (“doh”) - appended to a noun (often a pronoun) to indicate too/also/even
  • 만 (“man”) - appended to a noun (often a pronoun) to indicate only/exclusively

The topic/subject/object particles are usually omitted when any of the above occur - ie are replaced by them. However the topic/subject/object markers can be used to add extra emphasis.

Using 에 (“eh”) and 에서 (“ehsaw”) with places is a little tricky. The “ehsaw” form is used when an action is occurring at that place, eg “I am waiting in front of the library”, or “we are playing in the park”. It is also used to indicate the place from which someone is coming. The “eh” form is used to indicate a place someone is going to, etc. The “eh” form is also used with the verb “to be at” (있다), eg “The cat is on the table”; being somewhere is not an “action”. It’s almost the same as saying “use ehsaw with action verbs, use eh with descriptive verbs” - except in the case of “to go”, which is clearly an action but uses the “-eh” form.

The 에게 or 한테 suffix indicates a “recipient”. In the sentence “My father gives the ball to my sister”, “father” is the subject(or topic), “ball” is the object, and “sister” is marker with this “recipient” particle. It also can be used in the sense of “important to me” or “influence on him”. This is commonly translated in English as “to” but is not the same as a “geographical direction”. When used as a standalone word, 에게 has a quite different meaning - being similar to the English word “babe”.

The particle 고 (“ko”) is used in many different ways:

  • to form the progressive tense (together with “ittda”)
  • to express wanting to do some action (together with “shipda”)
  • to join multiple actions, eg “dance and sing” or “go to my friend’s house and watch TV”.

In all the above cases, the verb at the end of the sentence is conjugated, and all other verbs use only their stem + “ko”.

The particle 요 (“yo”) is of course the ending for verbs conjugated in the “polite declarative” form. However it can also be used to turn a single noun into a full sentence. Examples:

  • 고영이요? (“koyawngiyo?”) - “what about a/the cat?” or just “a cat?”.
  • (name)yo? - “what about (name)?” In particular, (name) 씨는요? can mean “what about you/what do you think/how do you feel about that, Mr (name)?”.

And/With/Comparisons

The concept of “and” in Korean is pretty similar to English. The things you need to know are:

  • 과/와 (“gwah/wah”) - polite-speech form of joining two nouns to indicate “and” eg “eat pizza and salad”. Mostly used in written form.
  • 하고, 랑/이랑 - same as above, but more common in spoken language.
  • 그리고 - used at the start of a sentence, effectively meaning “In addition, …”.
  • verb-stem + 고 - used to join two phrases (each with their own verb), eg “eat pizza and drink beer” (see below)

The “gwah” form is used after a consonant and the “wah” form is used after a vowel (the reverse of the pattern for many other particles). For 랑/이랑 the same rule applies as for topic/subject/object markers: use the variant that starts with a vowel when the previous syllable ends with a consonant (ie has a batchim). The particle is appended to the preceding noun. Note that the second noun will (likely) get a subject-marker/topic-marker/object-marker appended to it and the resulting subject/object is (A and B).

The same 과/와, 하고, 랑/이랑 forms used for saying “and” can also be used to say “with” - just put them after the last noun.

  • “Coffee with milk” is expressed in Korean as “Coffee Milk (and)”

These same “and/with” words are also used when comparing things, eg:

  • “Dogs are larger than cats” is expressed in Korean as “With regards to cats, dogs (and) more are-large”.

Using 고 with verbs is very simple and convenient. The “and” clause joins two subphrases, eg “I eat pizza” and “I drink beer”. Korean sentences only ever (fully) conjugate the verb at the end of the sentence, and “and” is no exception; for all verbs except the last one, append 고 to the verb-stem instead of conjugating it. When the verbs are action verbs then this form implies ordering of the actions, ie first X and then Y - rather like “and then ..”. As an example, the English sentence “I eat pizza and drink beer” in Korean is effectively “I pizza eat (stem) + 고 + beer drink (conjugated)”.

Expressing “Or”

Expressing “or” is much easier than “and” - just use 나/이나 to join two nouns.

Expressing “But/However”

  • 하지만 - used at the start of a sentence, effectively meaning “However …”
  • 그렇지먼 / 그런데 - similar to the above, but with slightly more and less contrast respectively
  • 지만 - used to join two phrases expressing “X but Y”

In a sentence such as “I like dogs but (I) have two cats”, there are two phrases each ending with a verb: “I like dogs” and “(I) have two cats”. Take the stem of the first verb and append 지만 instead of conjugating it (as usual, only the last verb in a sentence is ever conjugated).

Negation

Verbs can generally be turned into their opposites by preceding them with the article 안 (“ahn” - choose not to, ie won’t/don’t) or 못 (“mot” - am unable to, ie can’t). This is very much like English: “I don’t eat meat, I can’t eat nuts”.

However some verbs have quite different forms to express the opposite, eg 알다 (“alda” - to know) and 모르다 (“moreuda” - to be ignorant of). A very common case is 있다 (“ittda” - to exist/be-at) and 없다 (“awbda” - to not exist/not-be-at).

Statements that use the descriptive verb 이다 (“ida” - to be) can be inverted just by using the verb 아니다 (to not be - “anida”): “he my father is” -> “he my father is-not”. As noted in the section on the verb “to be”, the positive form has special behaviour in that it does not need a subject marker. The negative form is normal, ie does require a subject-marker after the noun.

And there are also modifiers that can be inserted into the middle of a verb to negate its meaning. The concept of “verb modifiers” was discussed in the section on verbs; they go between the stem and the conjugated ending. For example, the modifier 지않 (“chian”) turns verb 하다 (“hada”, to do) into 하지않다 (“hachianda”, to not do). The polite conjugations of these are 해요 (“hayyo”) and 하지않아요 (“hachianayo”).

Asking Questions

There are two types of questions in English: asking if something is true (ie questions with yes/no answers) and asking for more complex information. Korean also has this distinction.

When asking in English if something is true or not, the word order is changed and/or the word “Do” is used: “The house is large” becomes “Is the house large?” and “He likes dogs?” becomes “Does he like dogs?”. In addition, the tone goes upwards at the end of the sentence. In Korean, a yes/no question has exactly the same structure as a sentence stating it is true - but with the “inquisitive” conjugation of the verb, and a rising intonation (if spoken) or a question-mark (if written). The statement “The house is large” becomes a question simply by conjugating the descriptive verb “to-be-large” using the inquisitive form - and the questionmark/rising tone.

For questions requiring more than just yes/no answers, Korean has, like English, a set of “question words”: what/who/when/where/how/why. However sentence structures are not rearranged - instead, the answer to any question is simply the question sentence with the question-word replaced by the relevant info. For example the question “What that is?” can be answered with “Cat that is”, or “You what drink?” can be answered with “I coffee drink”. Alternatively expressed: if you want to make a question, think of a possible answer then replace the info you are actually seeking with the appropriate question word. In addition, conjugate the verb in the “inquisitive” form. Of course, answers don’t have to be in this form..

The inquisitive verb conjugation rules are different for different politeness levels, tenses, etc. For “polite formal” speech in the present tense, declarative verb conjugations end with “-mnida” while the inquisitive ends with “-mnikka”. For “polite informal” speech (the “-yo” endings), the inquisitive verb ending happens to be identical to the declarative one - which means that yes/no questions are identical to a statement - just with a question-mark and rising tone.

There is a particular issue regarding politeness-levels and questions: asking someone a question about themself is a fairly personal/sensitive thing to do and it can be appropriate to temporarily boost the level of politeness for such questions by applying the “honorific speech suffix” to the verb of a question before conjugating it. The same should be done when requesting someone to do something ie giving a polite command (eg “please sit down”). When using the “-yo” level of politeness this means that the verb will end in “-sehyo”; see the section on Honorific Speech for the full details.

As mentioned earlier, Korean generally avoids using the pronoun “you” (and also he/she). When you are asking a question to someone (eg “like cats?”), the “you” is obvious from context and so can be omitted.

Honorific Speech

As noted earlier, Korean verb conjugation indicates different levels of politeness (eg -yo form vs -mnida form). These forms indicate the level of respect for the listener/reader.

The “honorific” form is instead a way to conjugate verbs that shows extra respect to the topic of conversation (the subject of the verb). For example, it could be used when:

  • talking to a good friend (in casual speech conjugation) about their parents
  • talking to a work colleague about your manager/boss

It can also be applied when the topic of conversation is the listener. In this case, it “temporarily boosts” the level of politeness. Situations where this is appropriate include:

  • asking a favour
  • asking a personal question (of the person you are talking to)
  • giving a command, ie proposing that someone does something

To apply honorific politeness, take the verb stem and append 시다 (“shi-da”) if it ends in a vowel or 으시다 (“ur-shi-da”) if it ends in a consonant, and then conjugate the result. This is the same as inserting 시/으시 before the 다 of any verb. In present informal (“-yo” form), following the usual rules, this becomes the ending 세요 (“sehyo”) or 으세요 (“ursehyo”). In other politeness levels or tenses, just follow the regular conjugation rules for that level/tense.

There a few quirks when appending this “shida” suffix which depend on the ending of the last syllable of the verb stem:

  • a trailing ㄹ on the verb stem is simply dropped
  • a trailing ㅂ on the verb stem is dropped then 우 is added.

This form is never used for making regular statements (declarations of facts), talking about yourself, talking about things, etc. - it is only for speech about people (whether the person you are talking to, or someone else).

Note that -yo conjugation combined with appropriate use of -sehyo is pretty polite and can be sufficient for many situations.

Examples:

  • 가다 (“gada” - to go) conjugates as 가요 but in honorific form becomes 가시다 which conjugates as 가세요 (“gasehyo” - polite command “please go …”)
  • 먹다 (“mawkda” - to eat) conjugates as 먹어요 but in honorific becomes 먹시다 which conjugates as 먹으세요 (“mawkursehyo” - polite command “please eat..”)

and of course probably the most common examples:

  • 주다 (“chuda” - to give) becomes 주시다 which becomes 주세요 (“chusehyo” - formal command “please give ..”)
  • 안녕하다 (“ahnyonghada” - to be in good health) becomes 안녕하시다 which becomes 안녕하세요? (“ahnyonghasehyo?” - polite personal question “are you in good health?”)

When speaking formally, the same applies. The above examples become:

  • 가다 (“gada” - to go) conjugates as 갑니다 but in honorific form becomes 가시다 which conjugates as 가십니다 (“gashimnida” - formal command “please go …”)
  • 먹다 (“mawkda” - to eat) conjugates as 먹습니다 but in honorific becomes 먹시다 which conjugates as 먹십니다 (“mawkshimnida” - formal command “please eat..”)
  • 주다 (“chuda” - to give) becomes 주십니다 (“chushimnida” - formal command “please give ..”)
  • 안녕하다 (“ahnyonghada” - to be in good health) becomes 안녕하십니까? (“ahnyonghashimnikka?” - formal personal question “are you in good health?”)

Counting

As noted in the section on alphabets, numbers are written in the same was as in English.

However there are two quite separate ways of speaking numbers: the “native Korean” way and the “sino-korean” way. And as in English, it is possible to write down numbers using the spoken form (equivalent to writing “twenty-four” instead of “24”).

The sino-korean way has words for zero, one, .. ten, hundred, thousand, ten-thousand, and 100 million (ten-thousand ten-thousands). Eleven is ten-one, twelve is ten-two, twenty is two-ten, thirty-five is three-ten-five, etc - all very logical. After nine-ten-nine comes hundred, then hundred-one, three-hundred-four-ten-five, etc. The “ten-thousand” unit can be somewhat difficult to get to grips with, but is widely used: something costing $25.20 is about 25,200 won ie “two 10-thousand 5 thousand two hundred won”. Given that a lot of useful things cost more than $10, ie 10,000 won, it’s a word worth getting used to.

The native Korean way is, like English, a little quirkier. There are words for 1..10, and then specific words for 20, 30, 40, 50, etc. Values such as 23 are (logically) the word for 20 and the word for 3.

In general, the sino-korean system is used for “pure numbers” such as prices and telephone-numbers. The native Korean way is used for counting things (eg 3 hats). However as the sino-korean way is easier for larger numbers, people tend to also apply it when counting high numbers of things. The exact number at which the switch in “counting” occurs depends on generation with younger people tending to switch earlier than their elders - but certainly up to 20 the Korean words should be used. A person’s age is always given in the native Korean system.

In English we have a rich vocabulary of “units of counting”: two volumes of a dictionary, three glasses of a beverage, four slices of pizza, five bouquets of flowers, six scoops of icecream, seven stories of a building. Korean ups this to another level: there are a dozen or so words for different “units” and you are supposed to always use the correct unit. Examples:

  • 개 - generic “units/items” (use this if you aren’t sure)
  • 명 - for counting numbers of people
  • 마리 - for counting animals
  • 그루 - for counting trees
  • 잔 - for counting glasses (of beverage)
  • 병 - for counting bottles (of beverage)
  • 권 - for counting volumes (of books, magazines, etc)
  • 층 - for counting floors/stories of a building

Because-of / Due-to

Sentences like “I am rich because I won the lottery” or “thank you for helping me” are effectively two phrases joined together. Korean does the same, but in the reverse order (cause then consequence) ie effectively what “so” does in English: “I won the lottery so I am rich” or “you helped me so thank you”. This “so” is written 사 (“sa”) and is attached to the stem of the verb at the end of the first phrase.

Colours

This is a rather specific topic, but is an interesting example of how adjectives can be replaced by noun-concatenation.

There is a set of descriptive verbs for various colours: “to-be-red”, “to-be-blue”, “to-be-sky-blue”, etc. These can (at least theoretically) be used in the same way as other descriptive verbs eg “This car is-red”. As with other descriptive verbs they can also be converted into adjective-form by appending a suffix to the verb stem and used like “This red car …”.

However there is also a set of nouns representing “the colour red”, “the colour blue”, “the colour sky-blue”, etc. So a noun such as “car” can be qualified (made more specific) by a colour-noun in the same way that “ticket” can be qualified (made more specific) by a noun such as “train” or “concert”. This is a little difficult to grasp for English speakers because we don’t have nouns representing colours - the best we can do is an expression like “the colour red” and so we never say “This the-colour-red car ..” in the way we say “This train ticket”. In Korean, however, it’s perfectly acceptable to use this approach.

And in practice, the “descriptive verb” forms have almost died out. Expressing “This car is red” is commonly done by combining the adjective form with the verb “to be” - ie exactly as English does it.

These “colour nouns” and the verb forms are almost all very similar, eg:

  • 검다 (verb “to be black”), 검은 (adjective), 검은랙 (noun)
  • 파랗다 (verb “to be blue”), 파란 (adjective), 파란랙 (noun)
  • 빨갛다 (verb “to be red”), 빨간 (adjective), 빨간랙 (noun)

Extras

Batchims

The consonant or pair of consonants following the vowel in a syllable (if any) is called a “batchim” (받침). Or in other words, a syllable with 2 letters always ends in a vowel and has no batchim, while any syllable with 3 or 4 letters has a batchim and does not end in a vowel.

There are some special rules about pronouncing letters (consonants) when in batchim position. In particular:

  • in a “double” batchim (one with two consonants) the second consonant is often silent
  • strong letters (ㅋㅌㅍ ie K/D/P) are reduced to their standard form (ㄱㄷㅂ)
  • aspirants (ㅅㅈㅎie s/tsh/h) are converted to ㄷ(d)

However if the syllable following a batchim starts with a silent consonant then the last (or maybe only) letter of the batchim effectively replaces that silent consonant on the following syllable. A silent batchim-second-consonant is then pronounced, and a “modified” batchim-single-consonant regains its usual pronunciation.

Many tutorials use the expression “ends in a vowel” and “has a batchim” interchangeably. For example, subject-marker 은 (“urn”) is used when following a batchim, and 는 (“nurn”) when no batchim is present - ie when following a vowel.

Verb Conjugation Overview

As with most languages, verbs need to be conjugated before use, ie their ending gets modified to suit the context they are used in. Some conjugations are almost trivial, eg the “high formal” (“-imnida”) conjugation. And fortunately most of the other conjugations are related: first make the “basic form” and then add a simple ending.

Sadly converting verbs into their “basic form” is somewat complicated - but it opens the door to all sorts of useful tenses and modes. For example, the present-informal-polite-declarative is just a matter of adding “-yo” to the basic form. And in fact, the basic form alone is used for casual conversation between good friends, ie no extra changes at all.

The present-informal-polite-declarative is generally the most useful; it’s for making statements about what is currently happening, or about what usually happens. Examples: “This coffee is too hot” or “I like spicy food”. And it’s polite enough to be used with acquaintances or even strangers at a push (and foreigners get extra patience) while not being overly stuffy. Because of its usefulness, it’s what most language books teach first - despite the fact that you need to master the basic form.

Modes and tenses you will need eventually (with example conjugation of the verb “to come” and “to eat”):

  • casual aka “informal low” (between good friends)
    • present declarative - just the “basic form” (와, 먹어)
    • past declarative - basic + “-ssaw” (왔어, 먹었어)
    • future declarative - L-form + “kaw yah” (울거야, 먹을거야)
    • present inquisitive (asking questions) - same as declarative (and perhaps honorific speech)
    • present imperative (giving commands) - same as declarative
  • polite aka “informal high” (for colleagues, peer-like acquaintances, and strangers in casual contexts)
    • present declarative - basic form + “-yo” (와요, 먹어요)
    • past declarative - basic + “-ssawyo” (왔어요, 먹었어요)
    • future declarative - L-form + “kaw yey yo” (울거예요, 먹을거예요)
    • present inquisitive - same as declarative (and perhaps honorific speech)
    • present imperative - always honorific as present-declarative, ie “sehyo” (no batchim) or “ursehyo” (batchim) (오세요, 먹으세요)
  • plain aka “formal low” - in literature
    • present declarative - stem + “n/nurn” + da (온다, 먹는다)
    • past declarative - basic + “ssda” (왔다, 먹었다)
    • future declarative - L-form + “kaw da” (올거다, 먹을거다)
    • present inquisitive - stem + “ni” (오니/먹니) (and perhaps honorific speech)
    • present imperative - basic + “ra” (와라, 먹어라)
  • formal aka “formal high” (for superiors, teachers, elders, customers, etc)
    • present declarative: stem + “mnida” (no batchim) or “surmnida” (batchim) (옵니다, 먹습니다)
    • past declarative: basic + “sssurmnida” (왔습니다, 먹었습니다)
    • future declarative - L-form + “kawmnida” (울겁니다, 먹을겁니다)
    • present inquisitive: stem + “mnikka” (no batchim) or “shimnikka” (batchim) (옵니까, 먹십니까) (and perhaps honorific speech)
    • present imperative (making commands): stem + “shimshio” (no batchim) or “urshimshio” (batchim) (오심시요, 먹으십시오)

Note that the batchim/no-batchim variants are only needed for conjugations that derive from the verb stem; the basic form always ends in a vowel and the L-form always ends in a consonant (ㄹ).

The plain conjugations do often lead to adjacent consonants - this formality level just doesn’t bother with the complications that others do to make spoken language “flow” as easily. Possibly because this level is mostly used for written texts.

As shown above, for some politeness levels, there are dedicated conjunctions for asking questions (the “inquisitive”). However in the casual and polite forms, these are the same as the declarative form. In all cases, add a question-mark (written) or raise your tone at the end (spoken). The rising tone is particularly important in the cases where declarative and inquisitive are the same, as for yes/no questions that is the only hint to the listener that a question has been asked!

For declarations, questions (inquisitive) and commands (imperative), the “honorific” forms may be appropriate. This applies when:

  • the topic of the conversation is someone other than the listener, and that topic is a person deserving extra respect, or
  • when the topic of the conversation is the listener and you are asking a personal question

The progressive (continuing) tense (“I am eating” is different from “I eat”) is constructed by using “ko ittda”; see elsewhere.

Verb Conjugation Rules for the “Basic Form” (aka fully conjugated stem)

There are about 10 different “rules” you need to remembed in order to convert any verb into its “basic” form. These rules are too complicated for this article. However in general, it means removing the “da” suffix from the verb then appending either 아 (“ah”) or 어 (“aw”).

And note that “basic form” isn’t a standard term in Korean grammar. However it is one that a few learner’s books use and I think it is helpful.

One useful feature of the “basic form” is that it always ends in a syllable without a batchim. Therefore those grammatical forms that use it as a base (eg the past tense) never include rules about what to do if the verb has a batchim - in “basic” form it never does. Those grammatical forms that extend the “verb stem” (eg the future tense) do need to care about that.

Pronunciation

As described earlier, the sounds of the Korean language are different from English, but not extremely so. While it’s a generalisation, letters are generally “softer” than their nearest English equivalents.

The “strong” variants of some Korean consonants (ㅋㅌㅍ) are like their base forms (K, T, B) but pronounced with a puff of breath (“aspirated consonants”). Think of the extra line as indicating breath.

The “double” variants of some Korean consonants (ㄲㄸㅃ) reintroduce the tension that English has by default, and the result is quite similar to English K, T, or B. It is important not to use a “puff of breath” when pronouncing these - they are tense, not “aspirated”. One good tip I read is to think of the strong consonant ㄸ as being like the “D” in Homer Simpson’s “Doh!” - a sudden explosion of sound (though not necessarily loud). Maybe it is also helpful to consider ㄲ like the “C” in “Crack!” and ㅃ like either the “B” in “Bang!” or “P” in “Pow!”.

The sounds of letters are somewhat affected by the surrounding letters; the way the mouth moves from its earlier position and then as it prepares for the next sound affects the intermediate one - and maybe fools the ear too. We do tend to concentrate on, and practice, letters when they are at the start of a word but it’s important to concentrate on their sound when elsewhere too.

Terminal Consonants (Sound Change Rule)

For syllables with a Batchim, the last consonant is “cut off” very abruptly - it is pronounced, but without any “trail-off”.

However there are some consonants whose sound cannot easily be “cut off”. These are also the consonants whose sound can be “carried on” for as long as you like: ㅅ (“ssss…”), ㅈ (“tshhhhhh…”), ㅎ (“hhh….”). Therefore these consonants are replaced by ㄷ (“d”) which does have a clear cut-off. This is called “the t-stop”.

The strong consonants (which are pronounced with a puff of breath) have a similar issue; they also cannot be “cut off”. Therefore they all become their non-strong version.

However the above rule does not apply if the consonant can “flow into” the next syllable (of the same word), ie if:

  • the next syllable starts with the silent consonant (in which case the consonant “moves to” the next syllable), or
  • the next syllable starts with the same consonant (in which case it becomes a double).

Resources