Nouns: 동생 = younger sibling 남동생 = younger brother 여동생 = younger sister 형 = older brother, when you are a man 오빠 = older brother, when you are a woman 누나 = older sister, when you are a man 언니 = older sister, when you are a woman 삼촌 = uncle 이모 = aunt (on mother s side) 고모 = aunt (on father s side) 아저씨 = older man not related to you 아주머니 = older woman not related to you 할아버지 = grandfather 할머니 = grandmother 친구 = friend 사진 = picture 안경 = glasses 비밀 = secret 비 = rain 가게 = store/shop 박물관 = museum 가스 레인지 = stove (gas range) 오리 = duck (animal) 꼬리 = tail Verbs: 보고싶다 = to miss a person 기대하다 = to expect 건너다 = to cross (a road/etc) Adjectives: 지루하다 = boring 마르다 = a person to be too thin 멀다 = to be far away 마르다 = to be dry 비슷하다 = similar 싫다 = to not be good 오래되다 = for a thing to be old Adverbs and Other Words: 오늘 = today 월요일 = Monday 화요일 = Tuesday 수요일 = Wednesday 목요일 = Thursday 금요일 = Friday 토요일 = Saturday 일요일 = Sunday 어제 = Yesterday 내일 = tomorrow 모레 = the day after tomorrow 년 = year 일 = day 시간 = time Verbs: 싫어하다 = to not like 떠나다 = to leave somewhere 농담하다 = to joke 던지다 = to throw How to say I or me in Korean First of all, I want to point out the difference between I and me in English. This is something that I never knew/realized until I started to learn Korean as you will find that learning a foreign language will vastly increase your understanding of your mother tongue and languages in general. In English I and me have the same meaning, but they differ in their usage. When the speaker is the subject of a sentence I is used. When the speaker is the object (or other part) of a sentence me is used. For example: I love you ( I is the subject of the sentence) You love me ( me is the object of the sentence) HowtoStudyKorean.com Unit 1 1
In Korean, the same word is used to say I or me. That is, there is no difference in the Korean word if it used as a subject or object. However, remember that different particles will have to be attached to these words. Although the word in Korean for I/me doesn t change based on its usage in a sentence, it does change based on the politeness of a sentence. For example: 저 means I/me and is used in formal situations 나 means I/me and is used in informal situations ~는 can be attached to 저 and 나 to indicate I is the subject of a sentence. For example: 저는 나는 (I am purposely not providing example sentences because you still haven t learned proper conjugations. You will finally learn about conjugations in this lesson) ~를 can be attached to 저 and 나 to indicate that me is the object of a sentence. For example: 저를 나를 (I am purposely not providing example sentences because you still haven t learned proper conjugations. You will finally learn about conjugations in this lesson) ~가 can be attached to 저 and 나 to indicate I is the subject of a sentence or clause. I have already briefly distinguished the difference between ~이/가 and ~은/는 in Lesson 2. The difference between these particles is very subtle and takes years to fully grasp. I discuss these differences more deeply in Lesson 17 and Lesson 24, but this isn t immediately important to you right now. What is immediately important to you is that you remember that when ~가 is attached 나 changes to 내, and 저 changes to 제. For example: 내가 제가 (I am purposely not providing example sentences because you still haven t learned proper conjugations. You will finally learn about conjugations in this lesson) In the lesson below, all of the sentences are conjugated in an informal style. Therefore, all of the example sentences below use the informal 나 or 내. In this lesson, don t worry about formality and just focus on the information that I present. In the next lesson, you will learn more about formal and informal speech, and you will see 저 and 제 being used. HowtoStudyKorean.com Unit 1 2
How to say you You may have noticed that I still haven t taught you the word you yet. I know this is weird, but the word you is not said often in Korean. Korean people get around saying the word you through a number of ways: 1) Most of the time, you use somebody s (usually job) position when referring to them or talking about them. For example, boss (부장님), principal (교장선생님), vice principal (교감선생님), Mr. Name (for a teacher) (Name 선생님), customer (고객님), guest (손님), 회장님/사장님 (president/ceo of a company). 2) It is common in Korean to refer to people you are close with as a family member. 오빠 means older brother (when you are a woman). But even if somebody is not your older brother, you can call him 오빠 if you are close to him. 3) You can usually call any woman or man that looks very old grandmother and grandfather (할머니/할아버지). But other than that, you don t really call somebody part of your family unless you are close with that person. 4) You can generally call any strange man or woman that you don t know 아저씨 (man) and 아주머니 (woman). 5) In informal situations, you can use the word 너. ~는 and ~를 can attach to 너 when you is the subject or object of a sentence, respectively. If ~가 is added to ~너, it changes to 네가. In order to distinguish the pronunciation of 네가 and 내가 from each other (which, technically should be pronounced the same), 네가 is pronounced as knee-ga. 6) The word 당신 means you. You may use this word when talking to anybody, but Korean people rarely use it. Most people that say 당신 are foreigners and only do so because they are so used to saying you in English. HowtoStudyKorean.com Unit 1 3
Basic Conjugation: Past, Present, Future As I have said in every lesson so far - every sentence that you have learned thus far has not been conjugated. All the sentences you have learned so far would never actually be used in Korean because they are not conjugated. I felt you needed to know basic sentence structure before you learned how to conjugate. The good news, however is that conjugating in Korean is much easier than other languages (including English and especially French!). An important note before you begin This lesson will show you how to conjugate past/present/future verbs in the most basic way. Although all of these conjugations are grammatically correct, they are rarely used in conversation. This form is sometimes called diary form because it is usually used when writing to yourself in a diary. It is also used when writing a test, book (not in dialogue), research paper, newspaper article, magazine article, and other times when you are not speaking/writing to a specific audience. It is also sometimes called the plain form. If you used this form in a sentence, you should use the informal "나," as this conjugation is seen as informal. As such, in this lesson, you will see the word "나" used for "I" throughout this lesson. However, as I mentioned, this conjugation form is also used in print (books, newspapers, articles, etc...). When this is done, the sentence is neither formal or informal - as it is just relaying facts. When used like this, no specific person is the speaker, and nobody is getting directly spoken to. Therefore, you don't generally see "저" or "나" in these forms of Korean, and there is no need to see these writings as formal or informal. Though not important in conversation, this plain form conjugation is incredibly important if you want to understand more complex grammar later on or learn to read most printed forms of Korean (books, newspaper, etc ). You will learn the most important conjugations for conversation in the next lesson, but I highly recommend you to understand the conjugations presented in this lesson first. The only part of speech that gets conjugated in Korean is verbs and adjectives. As you already know, a sentence must end in either a verb or adjective. Let s look at how to conjugate verbs and adjectives in the past, present and future tenses HowtoStudyKorean.com Unit 1 4
Verbs Present Tense When the last syllable of a stem ends in a consonant, you add ~는다 to the stem: a. 먹다 = 먹는다 = to eat (먹 + 는다) b. 닫다 = 닫는다 = to close (닫 + 는다) Examples: 나는 문을 닫는다 = I close the door 나는 밥을 먹는다 = I eat rice When the last syllable of the stem ends in a vowel, you add ~ㄴ to the last syllable followed by 다 c. 배우다 = 배운다 = to learn (배우 + ㄴ다) d. 이해하다 = 이해한다 = to understand (이해하 + ㄴ다) e. 가다 = 간다 = to go (가 + ㄴ다) Examples: 나는 친구를 만난다 = I meet a friend 나는 그 것을 이해한다 = I understand that 나는 한국어를 배운다 = I learn Korean 나는 집에 간다 = I go home Past Tense Before you learn this, you need to know something important. Korean grammar is based on adding things directly to verbs or adjectives to have a specific meaning. This is a little bit confusing for you right now because this is really the first time you have heard about this. Well, actually, in the section above, you did this. Remember, to conjugate to the present tense, you must add the following to verbs: - ~는다 if the stem ends in a consonant and ~ㄴ다 if the stem ends in a vowel Hundreds of grammatical principles (not just conjugations, but grammatical principles that have actual meanings in sentences) are used by adding certain things to the stems of verbs and adjectives. You have not learned about any of these yet, but I want to show you an example of some things that you will learn about in future lessons. The following are added to the stems of verbs and adjectives to have specific meanings: - ~ㄴ/은 후에 to mean after - ~기 전에 to mean before - ~기 때문에 to mean because - ~아/어서 to mean because - ~아/어 야 하다 to mean one must - ~아/어서는 안 되다 to mean one shouldn t The list could go on and on forever. HowtoStudyKorean.com Unit 1 5
Notice that some of these grammatical principles require the addition of ~아/어. Many grammatical principles (or conjugations, or any other thing) require the addition of ~아/어 to the stem of a verb or adjective. Notice that the slash indicates that you need to choose what actually gets added to the stem. In some cases it is ~아, and in some cases it is ~어. The following is the rule that you can use to determine if you should add ~아 or ~어 : - If the last vowel in a stem is ㅏ or ㅗ (this includes rare cases of the last vowel being ㅑ or ㅛ) you add ~아 followed by the remainder of the grammatical principle. (The only exception is "하." If the last syllable in a stem is "하", ~여 must be added to the stem followed by the remainder of the grammatical principle instead of ~아. - If the last vowel in a stem is anything but ㅏ or ㅗ you add ~어 followed by the remainder of the grammatical principle When conjugating to the past tense, we need to add ~았/었다 to the stem of a word (or 였다 in the case of 하다). Following the rule above, ~았다 is added to words with the last vowel being ㅗ or ㅏ and ~었다 is added to words with the last vowel being anything but ㅏ or ㅗ. Finally, ~였다 is added to words with the last syllable being "하." For example: 나는 먹다 = I eat (note that this sentence is unconjugated) The last vowel in the stem is ㅓ. This is not ㅏ or ㅗ. So, we add 었다 to the stem: 나는 먹었다 = I ate (먹 + 었다) 나는 문을 닫다 = I close the door (note that this sentence is unconjugated) The last vowel in the stem is ㅏ. So we add 았다 to the stem: 나는 문을 닫았다 = I closed the door (닫 + 았다) 나는 창문을 열다 = I open the window (note that this sentence is unconjugated) The last vowel in the stem is ㅕ. This is not ㅏ or ㅗ. So we add 었다 to the stem: 저는 창문을 열었다 = I opened the window (열 + 었다) 나는 한국어를 공부하다 = I study Korean (note that this sentence is unconjugated) The last syllable in the stem is "하". Therefore, we add ~였다 to the stem: 나는 한국어를 공부하였다 = I studied Korean (공부하 + 였다) What makes this complicated (at first) is that for verbs that have a last syllable that end in a vowel (including 하다), the ~았다/었다 gets merged to the actual stem itself. HowtoStudyKorean.com Unit 1 6
This is how ~아 and ~어 (and ~여) merge with syllables ending in a vowel: 아 + 아 = 아 (example: 가 + 았다 = 갔다) 오 + 아 = 와 (example: 오+ 았다 = 왔다) 우 + 어 = 워 (example: 배우+ 었다 = 배웠다) 이 + 어 = 여 (example: 끼+ 었다 = 꼈다) 어 + 어 = 어 (example: 나서 + 었다 = 나섰다) 여 + 어 = 여 (example: 켜다 + 었다 = 켰다) 하 + 여 = 해 (example: 공부하다 + 였다 = 공부했다) Although 하 + 여 can be written as "해," there will be some situations (usually official documents) where you will see 하여 used instead of 해 : Words where the last vowel is ㅡ (for example: 잠그다) are complicated and will be covered in Lesson 7. Many people have asked me what if the last vowel in a stem is a more complicated vowel, like ㅠ, ㅑ, ㅔ, etc? You will find that the stem of almost all verbs and adjectives in Korean do not end in these complex vowels. The most common words I can think of that have stem that ends in one of these complex vowels are: 바래다 (to fade) 매다 (to tie up) 메다 (to put on/carry something on one s shoulder) With these words (and others like it), the same rule applies as above. That is, the final vowel does not end in ㅏ or ㅗ, so we need to add 어 plus whatever we are adding. With these complex vowels, it is irrelevant if you merge the addition to the stem. Both forms (merged and non-merged) would be correct. For example: 바래 + 었다 = 바랬다 or 바래었다 매다 + 었다 = 맸다 or 매었다 메다 + 었다 = 멨다 or 메었다 Here is a more detailed breakdown: 가다 = to go The last vowel in the stem is ㅏ. So we add 았다 to the stem. 나는 가았다 But, because the stem ends in a vowel, 았다 can merge with 가: 나는 갔다 = I went HowtoStudyKorean.com Unit 1 7
오다 = to come The last vowel in the stem is ㅗ. So we add 았다 to the stem. 나는 오았다 But, because the stem ends in a vowel, 았다 can merge with 오: 나는 왔다 = I came 배우다 = to learn The last vowel in the stem is ㅜ. So we add 었다 to the stem. 나는 배우었다 But, because the stem ends in a vowel, 었다 can merge with 우: 나는 배웠다 = I learned 던지다 = to throw The last vowel in the stem is ㅣ. So we add 었다 to the stem. 나는 던지었다 But, because the stem ends in a vowel, 었다 can merge with 이: 나는 던졌다 = I threw 건너다 = to cross The last vowel in the stem is ㅓ. So we add 었다 to the stem. 나는 길을 건너었다 But, because the stem ends in a vowel, 었다 can merge with 어: 나는 길을 건넜다 = I crossed the street Examples: 나는 친구를 만났다 = I met friends 나는 밥을 먹었다 = I ate rice 나는 한국어를 공부했다 = I studied Korean Future Tense Future tense is easy, and is simply a matter of adding ~겠다 to the stem of a word. For example: 나는 먹다 = I eat (unconjugated) 나는 먹겠다 = I will eat 나는 가다 = I go (unconjugated) 나는 가겠다 = I will go 나는 배우다 = I learn (unconjugated) 나는 배우겠다 = I will learn HowtoStudyKorean.com Unit 1 8
Two verbs specifically that are often conjugated in the future tense without actually having a meaning in the future tenses are 알다 (to know) and 모르다 (to not know). I don t want to make any example sentences (because they would be too complicated at this point), but it would be good to remember that the words 알다 and 모르다 are often conjugated to 알겠다 or 모르겠다. Although they are conjugated to the future tense, those two words are typically used to express that somebody knows/doesn t know something in the present tense. Also note that the ending of the conjugation will often change as well depending on the different honorifics that you will learn in the next lesson. Check out the table giving a breakdown of verbs in the past, present and future forms: Verb Stem Past tense Present tense Future tense 먹다 먹 먹었다 먹는다 먹겠다 닫다 닫 닫았다 닫는다 닫겠다 배우다 배우 배웠다 배운다 배우겠다 가다 가 갔다 간다 가겠다 이해하다 이해하 이해했다 이해한다 이해하겠다 오다 오 왔다 온다 오겠다 던지다 던지 던졌다 던진다 던지겠다 Adjectives Present tense You learned earlier that you must add ~ㄴ/는다 to a verb stem in order to conjugate it to the present tense. In order to conjugate an adjective to the present tense you don t need to do anything! Just leave the adjective as it is, and it is conjugated in the present tense. 그 선생님은 아름답다 = that teacher is beautiful 그 길은 길다 = that street is long 나의 손은 크다 = my hand is big Past tense In order to conjugate adjectives to the past tense, you must follow the same rule as when you conjugate verbs to the past tense. This rule, again, is: You must add 았다 or 었다 to the stem of a word. 았다 is added to words with the last vowel being ㅗ or ㅏ, and 었다 is added to words with the last vowel being anything but ㅏ or ㅗ. For example: 그 길은 길었다 = That street was long (길 + 었다) 그 음식은 맛있었다 = That food was delicious (맛있 + 었다) 그 선생님은 좋았다 = That teacher was good (좋 + 았다) 그 식당이 오래되었다 = That restaurant is old HowtoStudyKorean.com Unit 1 9
The meaning of 오래되다 is not old in a bad, negative sense. Rather, it is indicating that something has existed for a long time, and now it is old. A more appropriate way to indicate that something is old and decrepit is to use the word 낡다 not to be confused with the word 늙다, which refers to an old person. This is a little bit complicated for you now, but although ~었다 is attached to 되 to make 되었다, this can be contracted. Teaching this is not the focus of this lesson, so don t worry about this for now. You will learn more about 되다 in future lessons. See Lesson 9 or Lesson 14 for lessons nearby that discuss 되다. Also, while 되다 is commonly used and conjugated as a verb, in this case, 오래되다 is an adjective. Which means that [in addition to other ways it will change when used with other grammatical principles], ~ㄴ can be added to it to describe an upcoming noun. For example: 우리는 오래된 집에 갔다 = We went to the old house As with verbs, if the final letter of a verb/adjective stem is a vowel, 았다/었다 is merged to the actual stem itself: 이 것은 비쌌다 = This thing (it) was expensive (비싸 + 았다) 그 남자는 잘생겼다 = That man was handsome (잘생기 + 었다) 그 사람은 뚱뚱했다 = That person was fat (뚱뚱하 + 였다) Future tense Conjugating adjectives into the future tense is the same as conjugating verbs into the future tense. All you need to do is add 겠다 to the stem of the adjective: 나는 행복하겠다 = I will be happy 그 것은 맛있겠다 = That thing will be delicious 나는 배고프겠다 = I will be hungry In general, not only is this basic form rare in conversation, but Korean people do not use adjectives in the future as often as English speakers. Adjective Stem Past tense Present tense Future tense 행복하다 행복하 행복했다 행복하다 행복하겠다 비싸다 비싸 비쌌다 비싸다 비싸겠다 길다 길 길었다 길다 길겠다 맛있다 맛있 맛있었다 맛있다 맛있겠다 낡다 낡 낡았다 낡다 낡겠다 HowtoStudyKorean.com Unit 1 10
Conjugating 있다 and 있다 You learned in Lesson 2 that there are two meanings for the word 있다. One of the meanings is to have and is considered an adjective. You learned these sentences in Lesson 2: 나는 펜이 있다 = I have a pen 나는 차가 있다 = I have a car 나는 가방이 있다 = I have a bag Because this 있다 is considered an adjective, we follow the rule for conjugating an adjective to the present tense which is do nothing and leave the adjective the way it is. So, those three sentences above are perfectly conjugated and grammatically correct. But, the other meaning of 있다 is to be in/at a location and is considered a verb. You learned these sentences in Lesson 2: 나는 은행 안에 있다 = I am inside the bank 개는 집 안에 있다 = The dog is in the house 고양이는 의자 밑에 있다 = The cat is under the chair Because this 있다 is considered a verb, we follow the rule for conjugating a verb to the present tense which is add ㄴ/는다 to the stem of the verb. 나는 은행 안에 있는다 = I am inside the bank 개는 집 안에 있는다 = The dog is in the house 고양이는 의자 밑에 있는다 = The cat is under the chair Though this is true, you are more likely to see/hear 있다 (and all of the other verbs and adjectives from this lesson) conjugated using one of the honorifics introduced in the next lesson. Knowing that 있는다 is correct in this usage becomes more important when you learn more complicated grammatical principles. For example, quoted sentences (introduced in Lesson 52) require the use of the diary/plain form. Don't worry about that kind of thing now, though. For now, you need to focus on honorifics which will be introduced in the next lesson. Wow, that is a lot of grammar. Understanding this will probably be your the hardest step you will need to make in learning Korean. I really mean that. If you can get through this lesson, almost everything you will learn will relate back to the principles in this lesson in one way or another. Don t give up! HowtoStudyKorean.com Unit 1 11