Professional Documents
Culture Documents
= Korea
= city
= name
=I
=I
= man
= woman
= that
= this
= that (when object is far away)
= thing
= chair
= table
= teacher
= bed
= house
= car
Nouns:
= person
= book
= computer
= tree/wood
= sofa
= China
= Japan
= door
= doctor
= student
Adverbs and Other Words:
= to be
= not
= yes
= no
Greeting Words
When learning a language, people always want to learn hello, how are you, and
thank you before anything else. I know that. However, at this stage you only know
words - and have no knowledge or experience in how to use or conjugate these words.
The grammar within these words is too complex for you to understand right now.
However, you can just memorize these words as one unit and not worry about the
grammar within them at this point.
= hello
and are the two words that are commonly used to say "thank you."
However, they are rarely used in those forms and are almost always conjugated. They can
be conjugated in a variety of ways, which you won't learn until Lesson 5 and Lesson 6. I
will show you a list of the more commonly used forms, but I can't stress enough that you
won't understand how this works until later lessons:
HowtoStudyKorean.com Unit 1
HowtoStudyKorean.com Unit 1
Sometimes there is no object because it has simply been omitted from the sentence. For
example, I ate or I ate rice are both correct sentences. Other verbs, by their nature,
cannot act on an object. For example, you cannot place an object after the verbs sleep
or die:
I sleep you
I die you
Subjects are also present in sentences with adjectives. However, there is no object in a
sentence with an adjective. The subjects are underlined in the following adjectivesentences below:
School is boring
I am boring
The movie was funny
The building is big
My girlfriend is pretty
The food is delicious
It is incredibly important that you understand this from the very beginning. Every Korean
sentence MUST end in either a verb (like eat, sleep or walk) or an adjective (like
beautiful, pretty, and delicious). This rule is so important that Im going to say it again:
Every Korean sentence MUST end in either a verb or adjective.
It is also important to point out here that there are two ways to say "I" or "me" in Korean.
Depending on how polite you need to be speaking, many things within a sentence (mostly
the conjugation) can change. You wont learn about the different honorific conjugations
until Lesson 6, so you do not need to worry about understanding those until then.
However, before you reach those lessons, you will see two different words for "I," which
are:
, used in informal sentences, and
, used in formal sentences.
As Lessons 1 - 5 make no distinction of formality, you will see both and arbitrarily
used. Don't worry about why one is used over the other until Lesson 6, when politeness
will be explained.
Okay, now that you know all of that, we can talk about making Korean sentences.
Korean Particles (~/ and ~/)
Most words in a Korean sentence have a particle (a fancy word to say something)
attached to them. These particles indicate the role of each word in a sentence that is,
which word is the subject or object. Note that there is absolutely no way of translating
these particles to English, as we do not use anything like them.
The following are the most common particles:
HowtoStudyKorean.com Unit 1
or (Subject)
This is placed after a word to indicate that it is the subject of a sentence
Use when the last letter of the last syllable of the subject is a vowel. For example::
=
=
Use when the last letter of the last syllable of the subject is a consonant. For example:
=
=
or
This is placed after a word to indicate that is the object of a sentence.
Use when the last letter of the last syllable is a vowel:
=
=
Use when the last letter of the last syllable is a consonant:
=
=
We can now make sentences using the Korean sentence structure and the Korean
particles.
1) I speak Korean = I Korean speak
is attached to "I" (the subject)
is attached to "Korean" (the object)
2) I like you = I you like
is attached to "I" (the subject)
is attached to "you" (the object)
3) I wrote a letter = I letter wrote
is attached to "I" (the subject)
is attached to "letter" (the object)
4) I opened the door = I door opened
is attached to I (the subject)
is attached to the door (the object)
5) My mom will make pasta = My mom pasta will make
is attached to my mom (the subject)
is attached to pasta (the object)
HowtoStudyKorean.com Unit 1
I am sure that you will be tempted to start substituting Korean words into those
constructions to make real Korean sentences. However, at this point, that is too
complicated. The goal of this lesson is to familiarize yourself with the structure of
Korean sentences.
The same could be done for sentences with adjectives. However, remember that
sentences with adjectives will not have an object:
1) My girlfriend is pretty: My girlfriend is pretty
is attached to "my girlfriend" (the subject)
2) The movie was scary = The movie was scary
is attached to "the movie" (the subject)
There is one more particle that you should be aware of before we go any further.
(Place or time)
We havent talked about places or times yet, but if you do an action at a time, you must
attach the particle to the word indicating the time.
"" is also attached to a word to indicate that it is a place in the sentence. I want to write
more about what "" does, but at this point, it would only confuse you. For now, it is
sufficient to know that "" is used to indicate a place in a sentence.
Again, it is hard to translate these particles into English, but, plays the role of the
underlined words in the following sentences:
1) I went at 3pm
2) I went to the park
Sentences with a place/time can also have an object in them. For example:
3) I ate hamburgers at 3pm
If I were to write those same sentence using Korean structure and particles, they would
look like this:
1) I 3pm went
2) I park went
3) I hamburgers 3pm ate
In these cases, "at 3pm" or "to the park" act as adverbs (a word that tells you when, where,
how, how much). There is no set place for an adverb within a sentence, and it can
generally be placed anywhere (except the end). Adverbs will be discussed at length in
Lesson 8.
HowtoStudyKorean.com Unit 1
Again, the purpose of this first part of Lesson 1 was to familiarize yourself with the
different Korean particles and sentence structure. This knowledge will act as your base
for upcoming lessons when you will apply yourself to make actual sentences with
verbs/adjectives in Korean. While you will have to wait a little bit to create those types of
sentences, we can now talk about creating actual Korean sentences with the word "to be."
To be:
Now it is time to learn how to make actual sentences in Korean using to be. English
speakers dont realize how difficult this word actually is in English. Look at the
following examples:
I am a man
He is a man
They are men
I was a man
They were men
In each of those sentences, the word be is represented by a different word
(is/am/are/was/were) depending on the subject and tense of the sentence. Luckily, in
Korean, the same word is used to represent is, am, are, was and were. This word is
should not be thought of as a verb or an adjective in Korean, as in most cases it acts
differently. I will teach you how differs from verbs and adjectives as it becomes
important (in future lessons).
Sometimes however, is somewhat similar to adjectives. Remember that sentences
ending with adjectives do not have objects in them. Whenever a sentence is predicated by
an adjective, there will be no object in the sentence. Only sentences with verbs have
objects. Lets look at some examples:
I eat hamburgers (eat is a verb, the object is a hamburger)
I meet my friend (meet is a verb, the object is my friend)
I study Korean (study is a verb, the object is Korean)
I listen to music (listen is a verb, the object is music)
All of those sentences (can) have objects because the verb is the predicate of the sentence.
However, in sentences that are predicated by adjectives, there will not be an object:
I am pretty
I am hungry
I am beautiful
I am smart
This means that we can never use the particle ~/ in a sentence predicated by an
adjective (because ~/ denotes that there is an object).
The object particle is also not used when using the word . The basic structure for a
sentence predicated by is:
HowtoStudyKorean.com Unit 1
HowtoStudyKorean.com Unit 1