Learning Korean (한국어 배우기) [COMPLETE]

Unit 1.7 - Korean Irregulars

Vocab

Verb

찾다 (chaat-da) ~ to search for, find
일하다 (iil-ha-da) ~ to work
짓다 (jeet-da) ~ to build
잠그다 (jaam-geu-da) ~ to lock
잊다 (it-da) ~ to forget
돕다 (dob-da) ~ to help
주다 (joo-da) ~ to give
맞다 (maat-da) ~ to be correct

Adjectives

쉽다 (shweeb-da) ~ easy
그립다 (geu-reep-da) ~ to miss something/someonee
어렵다 (eo-ryeob-da) ~ difficult
바쁘다 (ba-bbeu-da) ~ busy
같다 (gaat-da) ~ same
안전하다 (aan-jeon-ha-da) ~ saf
가능하다 (ga-neong-ha-da) ~ possible
불가능하다 ~ impossible

Adverbs
일찍 (il-jjeek) ~ early

Irregulars

As with all languages, there are some irregular conjugations that you need to know. Irregulars are applied to certain verbs or adjectives when adding something to the stem of the word.

There are hundreds of additions that you can add to the stem of a verb or adjective. Some of these additions are conjugations and some of them are grammatical principles that have meaning in a sentence.

You have learned about some of these additions now. For example:

~ㄴ/는다 to conjugate to the plain form
~아/어 to conjugate to the informal low respect form
~아/어요 to conjugate to the informal high respect form
~ㅂ/습니다 to conjugate to the formal high respect form
~았/었어 to conjugate to the informal low respect form in the past tense
~ㄴ/은 added to an adjective to describe an upcoming noun

Most of the irregulars are applied when adding a vowel to a stem.

Let's look at one example before I introduce each irregular one by one. Let's say we want to conjugate the word "어렵다" into the past tense using the informal low respect form. The following would happen:

어렵다 + ~았/었어 = 어려웠어

Here, you can see that the actual stem of the word changed. This is referred to as the "ㅂ irregular" because the same phenomenon happens with many (but not all) words whose stem ends in "ㅂ".

As I mentioned previously, most of these irregulars are applied when adding a vowel to a stem. Although there are many additions that start with a vowel, the only ones that you have learned about to this point are the conjugations taught in Lessons 5 and 6:

~아/어
~아/어요
~았/었어
~았/었어요
~았/었습니다
~았/었다

As such, this lesson will present the Korean irregulars and how they change as a result of adding these conjugations. In later lessons when you learn about other additions, you can apply what you learned in this lesson to those concepts.

ㅅ Irregular

If the last letter of a word stem ends in ㅅ, the ㅅ gets removed when adding a vowel. This is only done with verbs (I can't think of any adjectives that end in ㅅ). For example, when conjugating:

짓다 = to make/build
짓 + 어 = 지어
나는 집을 지어 = I build a house

짓 + 었어요 = 지었어요
저는 집을 지었어요 = I built a house

Notice that this only happens when adding a vowel. When conjugating to the plain form, for example, you only add "~는다" to a stem and thus ㅅ does not get removed:

집을 짓는다 = to build a house.

The reason this irregular is done is to avoid changing the sound of a word completely after conjugating it.