๐จ๐ปโ๐ซA Few *Important* Things About Korean Verbs
The basic sentence structure and two different types of Korean verbs
์๋ ! Hi, there!๐๐ป
Did you catch the difference? I wroteย ์๋ ย instead ofย ์๋ ํ์ธ์. If you remember from last week, this is the casual form of โHello.โย On the other hand, ์๋ ํ์ธ์ ends with the syllable ์, so we know this phrase falls into the polite level of the language. By saying ์๋ to you, it means that I take you as a close friend of mine now๐! In real life though, it takes some time before people start making the transition from polite Korean to casual Korean, especially if there is an age gap. But thatโs a topic for another time.ย
Instead, weโre going to begin todayโs lesson withย 10 random Korean words. (Try and read them out loud if you are able to read Hangul):
โ ๋จน์ด์
โ ์ฌ์ด์
โ ์ผํด์
โ ๋ง์
์
โ ๊ฐ์
โ ์ฝ์ด์
โ ์์
โ ์ด์ผ๊ธฐํด์
โ ์ ํํด์
โ ์์
Take a closeย look at these words and based on what we have learned so far, see if you can spot the commonality. I know it may seem intimidating, especially if youโve only just started learning Hangul, but do your best! ํ์ดํ ๐!
Did you find something? Letโs check together.
If you noticed that theyโre all verbs, give yourself a pat on the back! All of the words in our listย end with the syllableย ์ย which is one of the three different types of verb conjugations specifically used for polite Korean. If you also noticed that all of these verbs are in polite form, then give yourself another pat! Again, going back to last weekโs lesson,ย we know that verbs in infinitive form, or โdictionaryโ form, end withย ๋คย meaning that these ten verbs are already all conjugated and are ready to be used in speaking๐.
Now Iโm going to give you the meanings of these verbs so we can slowly get started on building our vocabulary as well (However, donโt write them in your notebook just yetโ๐ป!):
โ ๋จน๋ค: to eat
โ ์ฌ๋ค: to rest
โ ์ผํ๋ค: to work
โ ๋ง์๋ค: to drink
โ ๊ฐ๋ค: to go
โ ์ฝ๋ค: to read
โ ์๋ค: to sleep
โ ์ด์ผ๊ธฐํ๋ค: to talk
โ ์ ํํ๋ค: to call
โ ์ค๋ค: to come
Wait! You noticed that the words look different, didnโt you๐? I reverted the conjugated verbs back to their infinitive form. So if you want, you can write them in your notes like this:
โ ๋จน๋ค: to eat โ ๋จน์ด์
โ ์ฌ๋ค: to rest โ ์ฌ์ด์
โ ์ผํ๋ค: to work โ ์ผํด์
โ ๋ง์๋ค: to drink โ ๋ง์
์
โ ๊ฐ๋ค: to go โ ๊ฐ์
โ ์ฝ๋ค: to read โ ์ฝ์ด์
โ ์๋ค: to sleep โ ์์
โ ์ด์ผ๊ธฐํ๋ค: to talk โ ์ด์ผ๊ธฐํด์
โ ์ ํํ๋ค: to call โ ์ ํํด์
โ ์ค๋ค: to come โ ์์
We have the infinitive verbs on the left and the conjugated on the right. Maybe you are already trying to see if you can find a conjugation pattern, but unfortunately itโs not that simple. (It doesnโt mean that itโs very difficult either๐ ) Instead of going over how to conjugate Korean verbs, weโre going to focus on two other (simple) things:
1. They are the last bit of the Korean sentences
Letโs take a look at the following sentence:
โI eat kimchi.โ = โ์ ๊น์น ๋จน์ด์.โ
The exact same sentence is written in English on the left and Korean on the right. However,ย you might notice that in the Korean sentence the word order is a little different from the English version.
I eat kimchi.
โ S + V + O์ ๊น์น ๋จน์ด์.
โ S + O + V
In both cases, the sentences start with a subject โIโ; however,ย in English, itโs followed by the verb,ย whereas the object,ย ๊น์น, is placed before the verb in Korean.ย I donโt know if you have noticed but this is the reason why you often hear Korean sentences ending with the same syllable โ์โ like โ์ฌ๋ํด์โ (I love you), โ๋ฐฐ๊ณ ํ์โ (Iโm hungry), โ์ผ๋ง์์?โ (How much is it?) and so on when watching K-dramas. (The word order of Korean sentences can actually be very flexible in spoken Korean though!)
Letโs try and write the following two simple sentences like the example above. Let me give you the vocabulary you need, coke =ย ์ฝ๋ผ [kol-la], newspaper =ย ์ ๋ฌธ [shin-mun]. Theย verbs you need are in the list above.
I drink coke.
I read newspapers.
Try and write them on a piece of paper before you check mine below!
Now, letโs check your work!๐
I drink coke = ์ ์ฝ๋ผ ๋ง์ ์.
I read newspaper = ์ ์ ๋ฌธ ์ฝ์ด์.
Did you get it right? Fairly easy, wasnโt it? Generally, in order to write a sentence in Korean, you just need to make sure that
You start your sentence with a subject first
Place your object (์ฝ๋ผ and ์ ๋ฌธ in our example)
End the sentence with the โconjugatedโ verb form (Not theย infinitive or โdictionaryโย verb form)
This third point is very important, especially since I have seen some of you trying to write sentences on your own in the comments using infinitive verbs instead. For example:
I learn Korean = ์ ํ๊ตญ์ด ๋ฐฐ์ฐ๋ค.
ํ๊ตญ์ดย means the Korean language and the verbย ๋ฐฐ์ฐ๋คย means โto learnโ. But since it is in the infinitive form (which we know, because it ends with the syllableย ๋ค), it should be conjugated before being put in the sentence. The conjugation of the verb isย ๋ฐฐ์์, so the sentence should be written as:
์ ํ๊ตญ์ด ๋ฐฐ์์.
This is the correct way to write โI learn Koreanโ or โIโm learning Koreanโ.
If you have any questions about what weโve talked about so far, leave a comment.
Now, on to our second point.
2. Action verb vs Descriptive verb
In Korean, there are two different types of verbs.
First, we have action verbs. These verbs involve some sort of action or movementโduh! Thatโs literally what verbs are, right? Iโm just stating the obvious! They are the words that generally come to our minds when we think about verbs. They are used when someone or something is doing something! Now, what might seem unfamiliar to you is the second kindโDescriptive verbs. But what is it exactly? Well, a descriptive verb is any verb that is not doing something; rather it describes something like a noun instead. To better help you understand the difference, letโs take a look at the following examples:
๋จน๋ค [meok-da]
This is the first verb from the list above and itโs an action verb that means โto eatโ. The verb is describing the action of eating.
Now, letโs take a look at another verb!
๋ง์๋ค [ma-shi-dda]
This is a descriptive verb that means โto be tastyโ or โto be deliciousโ, because it doesnโt involve any action. You might be thinking, โBut isnโt it just an adjective?โ. And Iโd say yesโฆ but no. In English, this particular word would be translated as โtastyโ or โdeliciousโ which are adjectives because they can come in front of a noun like a pizza๐!
A tasty pizza or
A delicious pizza
But looking at the Korean word ๋ง์๋ค from a grammatical point of view, itโs considered a verb, because it is written in the form of a verb. Remember, Korean verbs all end with ๋ค in the infinitive form. This means that you cannot place this word in front of a noun, because itโs not an adjective. My advice would be when you come across a verb that sounds like an adjective in English, in Korean itโs going to be a descriptive verb.
So, take a look at the ten verbs again and tell me which ones are descriptive verbsโฆ
Trick question!ย Actually there are none๐!
If you have seen the stories I post on my IG, youโd know my hobbies are learning Spanish๐ and working out at the gym๐๏ธ. What is your hobby? What do you like to do when you have spare time? In the comments, try and write a sentence about your hobby. Make sure to follow the subject โ object โ verb order! Let me show you a couple of examples:
Iโm learning Spanish = ์ ์คํ์ธ์ด ๋ฐฐ์์
I work out = ์ ์ด๋ํด์
If you canโt find the right word for your hobby, drop a comment and Iโll help you out!
Andโฆ thatโs it for today! How was todayโs lesson? Let me know if you learned anything new or have any questions๐!
๋ด์ ๋ ๋ด!๐
์๋ ํ์ธ์ ์ ์๋! Interesting today's lesson, it's a pity that it is once a week. I had guessed some things (my university studies of linguistics were useful for something) and then confirmed by watching videos or searching on the internet and books.
Anyway congratulations, ์ฐ๋ฆฌ ์ ์๋, for always being clear and making the explanations simple and easily understandable. ๐จโ๐ซ ๋ฌธ์ is the best teacher.
What about my hobbies? ์ ๋ ๊นํ ์ฌ๋ํด์ (I meant "I love ๊นํ's music"), ์ ๋ ๋ถ๋ฅด์ ๐ฉ๐ผโ๐ค. ์ ๋ ๋งค์ผ 10 km (?) ๊ฑท์๐๐ผโโ๏ธ. ์ ๋ ํ๊ทน์ด ๋ฐฐ์์ ๐ฉ๐ผโ๐๐ฐ๐ท.
Could I ask you a question? How do you join two sentences with the conjunction AND?
I apologize if I was long and I thank you in advance. ๊ฐ์ฌํฉ๋๋ค ์ ์๋!
๋ค์์ ๋ ๋ด! ๐๐ผโโ๏ธ๐
I learned a little. It ist very good. But with my age of 68, I can only Take very little steps.
What I told in German Last time, was the fact, that I don't know the Hangul Alphabet and don't have possibility or knowledge how to use It with my Smartphone.
Doesn't matter...It's all very good. Thank you!