Learning Korean (한국어 배우기) [COMPLETE]

Unit 1.1 - Basic Korean

There will be a lot of 복습 :)

To be: 이다

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 'to 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 '이다'

이다 should not be thought of as a verb or an adjective in Korean, as in most cases it acts differently. 이다 differs from verbs and adjectives as it becomes important (in future lessons).

Sometimes however, 이다 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.

Example:

I ate hamburgers (ate is a verb, hamburger is the object)

The sentence (can) have objects because the verb is the predicate of the sentence. However, in sentences that are predicated by adjectives:

I am pretty
I am beautiful

can never use the particle ~을/를 in a sentence predicated by an adjective. The object particle is also not used when using the word "이다." The basic structure for a sentence predicated by "이다" is:

[noun은/는] [another noun] [이다]

For example:

나는 사람이다 = I am a person

이다 gets attached directly to the noun.

나는 남자이다 = I am a man

It is very important that you remember that ~를/을 is not attached to words in sentences with "이다." The following would be very incorrect:

나는 남자를 이다. ❌

이 다 is the only word that acts like this, and is one of the reasons why you should treat it differently than other verbs or adjectives.

And if there is no 받침 in front, we take the 이 out. So:

나는 남자다

나는 ______이다 = I am a _______
(나는 _______ 이야 / 저는 _____이에요)
You can substitute any noun into the blank space to make these sentences.
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In reality, these words are never (or very very rarely) used without conjugations and honorifics. Therefore, while I stress the importance of understanding the structure of the sentences presented in Lessons 1, 2, 3 and 4 don't use the sentences in any form of communication with Korean people.

In order to completely understand what is presented in later lessens, it is essential that you understand what is presented in these first four lessons - even though they may be seen as "technically incorrect."For all of the "technically incorrect" (un-conjugated) sentences presented in Lesson 1 - 4 I will provide a correct (conjugated) version of the same sentence in parenthesis below the un-conjugated version (one formal and one informal conjugation).
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Continued next chapter ~ Unit 1.1 (2)