Learning Korean (한국어 배우기) [COMPLETE]

Unit 1.4 - Korean Adj

Vocab

Nouns
Street / Road / Path / Way ~ 길 (giil)
Distance / Street / Avenue ~ 거리 (geo-lee)
Train (another word) ~ 열차 (yeol-cha)
Train / Subway station ~ 역 (yeok)
Bus stop ~ 버스 정류장 (jeong-ryu-jaang)
Son ~ 아들 (a-deul)
Daughter ~ 딸 (ddaal)
Letter ~ 편지 (pyeon-jee)
Taste ~ 맛 (maat)

Verbs
To come ~ 오다 (o-da)
To finish ~ 끝내다 (ggeut-ne-da)
Dance ~ 춤추다 (choom-choo-da)
Know ~ 알다 (aal-da)
Learn ~ 배우다 (be-oo-da)
Practice ~ 연습하다 (yeon-seub-ha-da)
Think ~ 생각하다 (seng-gak-ha-da)
To live ~ 살다 (saal-daa)

Adjectives
Dangerous ~ 위험하다 (we-heom-ha-da) < we english way
Tired ~ 피곤하다 (pee-gon-ha-da)
To be different ~ 다르다 (da-leu-da)
Delicious ~ 맛있다 (maa-shiit-da)
Many ~ 많다 (maan-ta)
Happy ~ 행복하다 (heng-bok-ha-da)

Adverbs and Other Words
There ~ 거기 (geo-gii)
There (when farther away) ~ 저기 (jeo-gii)
Now ~ 지금 (jii-geum)

Common greeting words

When learning a language, everybody wants to learn these words as soon as possible. I understand that completely, but I have purposely waited to teach you these types of words.

In Korean, it is much easier to understand these words/phrases if you also understand why they are used the way they are. Here are some very common phrases which you have already learned:

Goodbye ~ 안녕히 가세요 / 안녕히 계세요
Excuse me ~ 실례합니다
Sorry ~ 죄송합니다 / 미안합니다
My name is ~ 제 이름은 ______이에요

Haven't learned:
I am from ~ 저는 ______에서 왔어요
Nice to meet you ~ 만나서 반갑습니다
Where are you from? ~ 어디에서 왔어요?

If you can't memorize them, that is okay. I still maintain the position that you should put off memorizing these until you can understand the grammar within them.

Using Adjectives ~ㄴ/은

Alright, this won't help you understand those greeting words any better, but what you are about to learn is a major step in learning Korean. You should remember these two important facts from the previous lesson:

All sentences must end with either a verb or adjective
All verbs/adjectives end with the syllable '다'

Although both of those are true (and always will be), let's look at them more deeply:

All sentences must end with either a verb or adjective
- Yes, but verbs and adjectives can ALSO go elsewhere in a sentence. In the previous lesson, you learned this sentence:

저는 배를 원하다 = I want a boat
(나는 배를 원해 / 저는 배를 원해요)

But what if you want to say: "I want a bigboat." In that sentence, there is a verb and an adjective. Where should we put the adjective? In Korean, this adjective is placed in the same position as in English. For example:

나는 배를 원하다 = I want a boat
나는 big 배를 원하다 = I want a big boat

Simple. So we just substitute the Korean word for big (크다) into that sentence?:

나는 크다 배를 원하다 ❌

All verbs/adjectives end with the syllable '다'
- Yes, but the version of the word with '다' as the last syllable is simply the dictionary form of that word and is rarely used. Every verb/adjective in Korean has a 'stem,' which is made up of everything preceding 다 in the dictionary form of the word.

크다 = 크 (stem) + 다
작다 = 작 (stem) + 다

Most of the time, when you deal with a verb/adjective, you eliminate ~다 and add something to the stem.

When you want to make an adjective that can describe a noun like this:

Bbig boat
Small boy

You must eliminate '~다' and add ~ㄴ or ~은 to the stem of the adjective.

Words in which there is a no 받침, you add ~ㄴ as a 받침.

Word Stem Adjective that can describe a noun
크다 큰 크 + ㄴ = 큰
Example Translation
큰 배 Big boat

Words with 받침, you add ~은 to the stem:

Word Stem Adjective that can describe a noun
작다 작 작 + 은 = 작은
Example Translation
작은 남자 Small man

I want a big boat = 나는 크다 배를 원해 ❌
I want a big boat = 나는 큰 배를 원해 ✔

The key to understanding this is being able to understand the difference between the following:

음식은 비싸다 = The food is expensive
비싼 음식 = expensive food

The first example is a sentence. The second example is not a sentence. You need to add either a verb or adjective that predicates the noun of "expensive food." For example:

나는 비싼 음식을 먹는다 = I eat expensive food
(나는 비싼 음식을 먹어 / 저는 비싼 음식을 먹어요)
The verb "to eat" predicates this sentence.

비싼 음식은 맛있다 = Expensive food is delicious
(비싼 음식은 맛있어 / 비싼 음식은 맛있어요)
The adjective "to be delicious" predicates this sentence. Notice that there is no object in this sentence.

이 차는 크다 = This car is big
(이 차는 커 / 이 차는 커요)

The adjective "big" predicates this sentence. Notice that there is no object in this sentence.

In the examples above, even though the adjective always acts as a descriptive word, in the cases when they are placed before nouns to describe them - those nouns are able to be placed anywhere in the sentence (for example, as the subject, object, location, or other places).

I can use adjectives to describe each noun in the sentence.

행복한 여자는 작은 차 안에 있다.
The happy girl is inside the small car

You will see some adjectives that end in "~있다." The most common of these for a beginner are:

맛있다 = delicious
재미있다 = fun, funny

When an adjective ends in "~있다" like this, instead of attaching ~ㄴ/은 to the stem, you must attach ~는 to the stem. For example:

그 남자는 재미있는 남자다 = that man is a funny man
(그 남자는 재미있는 남자야 / 그 남자는 재미있는 남자예요)

나는 맛있는 음식을 먹다 = I eat delicious food
(나는 맛있는 음식을 먹어 / 저는 맛있는 음식을 먹어요)

For now you do not need to think about why ~는 is added instead of ~ㄴ/은. It is sufficient at this point to just memorize it as an exception. The concept behind this grammatical rule is introduced.

Continue - Unit 1.4 (2)