HowtoStudyKorean.

com Unit 1 1

Nouns:
= older brother, when you are a man
= older brother, when you are a woman
= older sister, when you are a man
= older sister, when you are a woman
= uncle
= aunt (on mothers side)
= aunt (on fathers side)
= older man not related to you
= older woman not related to you
= grandfather
= grandmother
= friend
= picture
= glasses
= secret
= rain
= store/shop
= museum
= stove (gas range)
= duck (animal)
= tail
Verbs:
= to miss a person
= to expect
= to cross (a road/etc)
= to throw
= to try/attempt something
Adjectives:
= boring
= a person to be too thin
= an object to be old
= to be far away
= to be dry
= similar
= to not be good
Adverbs and Other Words:
= today
= Monday
= Tuesday
= Wednesday
= Thursday
= Friday
= Saturday
= Sunday
= Yesterday
= tomorrow
= the day after tomorrow
= year
= day
= time

Verbs:
= to not like
= to leave somewhere
= to joke
How to say "I/me"
You probably noticed by now, but there are two ways to say I/me in Korean. One of
them is considered polite, and the other one is considered casual.
is considered polite
is considered casual
In addition, when you add the subject marker particle to or (to identify that I
is the subject of a part of a sentence), changes to "" and changes to ""
and = used when I is the subject of the main part of the sentence
and = used when I is the subject of a part of a sentence which is not the
main part. For example:
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When I came home, my mother made a hamburger.
I is only the subject of the part of the sentence which is indicating the time that your
mother made a hamburger. My mother is the subject of the entire sentence. In cases
like this, you would used / to represent I."
I would show you an example of the sentence above, but the grammar is way to complex
for you right now. For now, simply understand that changes to , and changes to
when / are attached.
You can use the same word ("" or "" depending on the context) to say "me." You
probably don't realize this, but "me" is used in English when it is the object (not the
subject) of a sentence. For example, you can't say:
Me like hamburgers (although you would understand that sentence).
However, when placed as the object of a sentence "me" should be used in English. For
example:
He likes me
In Korean, / is used for both "I" or "me."

How to say you
You may have noticed that I still havent 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 somebodys (usually job) position when referring to
them or talking about them. For example, boss (), principal (),
vice principal (), Mr. Name (for a teacher) (Name ), customer
(), guest (), / (president/CEO of a company).
2) It is common in Korean to refer to people you are close with as a family member.
means older brother (when you are a woman). But even if somebody is
not your older brother, you can call him if you are close to him.
3) You can usually call any woman or man that looks very old grandmother and
grandfather (/). But other than that, you dont 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 dont know
(man) and (woman).
5) If somebody is younger than you, you can use the word you which is: .
6) The word means you. You may use this word when talking to anybody,
but Korean people rarely use it. Most people that say 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. If you used this form in a sentence, you should
use the informal "," as this conjugation is seen as informal. As such, in this lesson, you
will see the word "" 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 "" or "" in these forms
of Korean, and there is no need to see these writings as formal or informal.

Though not important in conversation, these conjugations are incredibly important if you
want to understand more complex grammar later on. 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.

Lets look at how to conjugate verbs and adjectives into the past, present and future
tenses.

Verbs
Present Tense
1) When the last syllable of the stem ends in a consonant, you add ~ to the
stem:
a. = = to eat ( + )
b. = = to close ( + )
Examples:
= I close the door
= I eat rice

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2) When the last syllable of the stem ends in a vowel, you add ~to the last
syllable followed by
a. = = to learn ( + )
b. = = to understand ( + )
c. = = to go ( + )

Examples:
= I meet a friend
= I understand that
= I learn Korean
= I go home


Past Tense
Before you learn this, you need to know something important. From now on, there will be
thousands of other times when you will need to follow this same rule. Usually, when you
add something to a verb/adjective, it has to be done in the following fashion:
- If the last vowel in a stem is or (except ) you add PLUS whatever else
you are adding.
- If the last vowel in a stem is anything but or you add PLUS whatever
you are adding.
For conjugating in the past tense, you need to add or to the stem of a word. So,
is added to words with the last vowel being or and is added to words
with the last vowel being anything but or . For example:

= I eat
The last vowel in the stem is . This is not or . So, we add to the stem:
= I ate ( + )

= I close the door
The last vowel in the stem is . So we add to the stem:
= I closed the door ( + )

= I open the window
The last vowel in the stem is . This is not or . So we add to the stem:
= I opened the window ( + )

What makes this complicated (at first) is that for verbs that have a last syllable that end in
a vowel, the / gets merged to the actual stem itself. This is how and
merge with syllables ending in a vowel:



HowtoStudyKorean.com Unit 1 5
+ = (example: + = )
+ = (example: + = )
+ = (example: + = )
+ = (example: + = )
+ = (example: + = )
+ = (example: = )
** When the last syllable of a word is , it gets conjugated irregularly (thousands of
words end with the stem ). Instead of adding or to the stem, you add to word
stems that end in . (+ = ). gets shortened to most of the time:
+ = (example: + = = )

Words where the last vowel is , it is complicated and will be covered in the next lesson.

Here is a more detailed breakdown:

= to go
The last vowel in the stem is . So we add to the stem.

But, because the stem ends in a vowel, can merge with :
= I went

= to come
The last vowel in the stem is . So we add to the stem.

But, because the stem ends in a vowel, can merge with :
= I came

= to learn
The last vowel in the stem is . So we add to the stem.

But, because the stem ends in a vowel, can merge with :
= I learned

Examples:
= I met friends
= I ate rice
= I studied Korean


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Future Tense
Future tense is easy, and is simply a matter of adding ~ to the stem of a word:

= I eat
= I will eat

= I go
= I will go

= I learn
= I will learn

Check out the table giving a breakdown of verbs in the past, present and future forms:
Verb Stem Past tense Present tense Future tense








Adjectives
Present tense
You learned earlier that you must add ~/ to a verb stem in order to conjugate it to
the present tense. In order to conjugate an adjective to the present tense you dont need to
do anything! Just leave the adjective as it is, and it is conjugated in the present tense.

= that teacher is beautiful
= that street is long
= 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 or to the stem of a word. is added to words with
the last vowel being or , and is added to words with the last vowel
being anything but or .
For example:
= That street was long ( + )
= That food was delicious ( + )
= That teacher was good ( + )
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As with verbs, if the final letter of a verb/adjective stem is a vowel, / is merged
to the actual stem itself:

= This thing (it) was expensive ( + )
= That man was handsome ( + )
= That person was fat ( + )

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 to the stem of the adjective:

= I will be happy
= That thing will be delicious
= 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






Conjugating and
You learned in Lesson 2 that there are two meanings for the word .
One of the meanings is to have and is considered an adjective. You learned these
sentences in Lesson 2:

= I have a pen
= I have a car
= I have a bag

Because this 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 is to be in/at a location and is considered a verb. You
learned these sentences in Lesson 2:

= I am inside the bank
= The dog is in the house
= The cat is under the chair
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Because this is considered a verb, we follow the rule for conjugating a verb to the
present tense which is add / to the stem of the verb.

= I am inside the bank
= The dog is in the house
= The cat is under the chair

BUT! Though this is true, Korean people would still say and not see
anything wrong with it. In fact, it is actually more common to use instead of
in these sentences.
The reverse, however, is not true. You could never substitute for :

= okay
= incorrect

= grammatically correct, not used in conversation
= used in conversation more than the above example

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. Dont give up!