How to study Korean

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UNIT 1
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Lesson 1: Basic Korean Sentences

Click here for a workbook to go along with this lesson.

This Lesson is also available in Espaol, , Franais, and

Deutsch

Jump to:
Vocabulary
Greeting Words
Sentence Word Order
Korean Particles
To be:
That thing/This thing

This thing is a book

Click here for a free PDF of this lesson.

Vocabulary

The vocabulary is separated into nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs for the
purpose of simplicity.

Click on the English word to see information and examples of that word in use
(you probably wont be able to understand the grammar within the sentences
at this point, but it is good to see as you progress through your learning).

A PDF file neatly presenting these words and extra information can be found
here.

Want to give your brain practice at recognizing these words? Try finding the
words in this vocabulary list in a Word Search.

Nouns:
= Korea

Common Usages:
= Korean person
= Korean language
= Korean person

Notes: The formal name of the country is

Examples
7 = I lived in Korea for seven years
= I will go to Korea next year
= My mom will come to Korea this year
= I learned Korean in Korea
= High school is difficult in Korea
= that house was built in Korea
= I live in Korea

= city

= name

= I, me (formal)

= I, me (informal)

 = man

= woman

= that

= this

= that (when something is far away)

= thing

= this (thing)

= that (thing)

= that (thing)

= chair

= table

= teacher

= bed

 = house

= car

= person

= book

= computer

= tree/wood

= sofa

= China

= Japan

= door

= doctor

= student

Adverbs and Other words:

= to be

= not

= yes

= no

There are 1050 vocabulary entries in Unit 1. All entries are linked to an audio
file. You can download all of these files in one package here.

For help memorizing these words, try using our Memrise tool.

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
wont learn until Lesson 5 and Lesson 6. I will show you a list of the more
commonly used forms, but I cant stress enough that you wont understand
how this works until later lessons:

? = How are you?

Technically the appropriate expression in Korean, but not as common as how
are you in English. I would say that using ? is an English style of
greeting people in Korean.

= Please

It is, of course, important for you to memorize these expressions in Korean,

but you need to know that there is a reason why they are said that way. For
now, dont worry about why they are said that way, and simply memorize
them. We will get back to them in later lessons when they become
important.

Sentence Word Order

One of the hardest things to wrap your head around in Korean is the alien-like
sentence structure. For our purposes in Lesson 1, Korean sentences are
written in the following order:

Subject Object Verb (for example: I hamburger eat)

Or
Subject Adjective (for example: I beautiful)

I am going to quickly explain what a subject and object mean, as your

ability to understand later concepts depends on your understanding of this.
The subject refers to person/thing/noun/whatever that is acting. The subject
does the action of the verb. For example, the subject in each sentence below
is underlined:

I went to the park

I will go to the park
My mom loves me
He loves me
The dog ran fast
The clouds cleared up
In English, the subject always comes before the verb.

The object refers to whatever the verb is acting on. For example, the object in
each sentence below is underlined

My mom loves me
The dog bit the mailman
He ate rice
Students studied Korean
In English, the object always comes after the verb. However, a sentence with
a verb does not require an object. For example:

I slept
I ate
He died

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 adjective-sentences 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. Dont 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, specifically 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 particles you should know for this lesson:

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 (Object)
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. For example:
=
=

Use when the last letter of the last syllable is a consonant. For example:
=

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)

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.

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 its time to learn how to make an actual sentence using the word to be.
English speakers often dont realize how difficult this word 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 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

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:

I am pretty
I am beautiful
I am hungry
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:

[noun /] [another noun] []

For example:
I man = I am a man

Now substitute the words for man and I:

=I
= man

+ +

gets attached directly to the noun. So, the above construction looks like:

 = I am a man

It is very important that you remember that ~/ is not attached to words in

sentences with . The following would be very incorrect:

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.

The focus of this lesson (and Lessons 2 and 3) is to introduce you to simple
Korean sentence structure. Until you reach Lesson 5 and Lesson 6 you will not
be exposed to the conjugations and honorifics of Korean verbs, adjectives and
.

In reality, these words are never (or very very rarely) used without these
conjugations and honorifics. Therefore, while I stress the importance of
understanding the structure of the sentences presented in this Lessons 1, 2,
3 and 4 do not use the sentences in any form of communication with Korean
people, as they will most likely not be understood. In order to completely
understand what is presented in Lessons 5 and 6 (and for the rest of your
Korean studies), 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). Note one more time that you will not understand these
conjugations until Lessons 5 and 6 (for verbs and adjectives) and Lesson 9
(for ).

Other examples of in use:

 = I am a woman
( / )

= I am a teacher
( / )

= I am a person
( / )

______ = I am a _______
( _______ / _____)
You can substitute any noun into the blank space to make these sentences.

This and That (//)

You can see in the vocabulary above that the word for this is in Korean.
We use in Korean when we are talking about something that is within
touching distance (For example: this pen i.e. the one I am holding). Just like
in English (this) is placed before the noun it is describing. For example:

= This person
= This man

 = This woman
= This car
= This table
= This chair

Unfortunately, there are two words for that: and . Early learners of
Korean are always confused with the difference between and .

We use when we are talking about something from a previous sentence or

from previous context, regardless of if you could see it or not. Providing
examples would be too difficult right now because you do not know any
Korean sentences. However, if I were to say: I dont like that man [when your
friend mentioned him in a previous sentence]. The word that in that
sentence would be how is used.

We use when we are talking about something that we can see, but cannot
touch because it is too far away.

We can place or before a noun to describe this or that thing just

like we did with .

= This person
= That person
= That person

= This man
= That man
= That man

 = This woman
= That woman
= That woman

= This chair
= That chair
= That chair

= This table
= That table
= That table

Again, although the English translations of and are the same, it is

important to remember that they are not the same word in Korean.

One of the most common words in Korean is meaning thing. When ,

or are placed before , the result is a compound word. Therefore,
when placing after , or , there should not be a space between the
two. In other words, the following are words in and within themselves, and
not two separate words:

= this thing
= that thing
= that thing

We see this same phenomenon happen with other common words that you

learn in future lessons. You dont need to worry about this now, but we see
this same thing happen with the word (meaning place) and (meaning
time).

With these words, the word thing isnt necessary in the English translation.
Let me explain.

Ill use that as an example, but the same idea can be applied to the word
this.

That can be placed before a noun to describe it. As we saw earlier:

That person
That man
That woman

However, it can also be a noun itself. For example:

I like that

In this type of English sentence, that is referring to some thing that you
like. It is a noun. It is a thing.

Therefore, the sentence could just as easily be said as:

I like that thing

I dont like to use grammatical jargon in my lessons, but if you know what
these words mean, it could be helpful. In both English and Korean, that can

be a determiner (as in, I like that man), and it can also be a pronoun (as in
I like that). When used as a determiner in Korean, you should place
before a noun. When used as a pronoun in Korean, the word is used.

In this same respect, while , and translate to this, that and that
respectively, and are placed before nouns to indicate this noun, that noun
and that noun, , and are nouns (they are pronouns).
Therefore, they do not need to be followed by the redundant word thing,
although their meanings would be exactly the same:

I like this
I like this thing

I like that
I like that thing

We can now use these nouns as subjects or objects in a sentence. We will

look at how they can be used with next.

Using This/That with

Remember, translates to to be and is conjugated as am/is/are in

English. Now that we know how to use , and (and , and ),
we can now make sentences like this:

That person is a doctor

We can start by putting those words into the Korean structure:

That person doctor is

And then changing the English words to the appropriate Korean words:

+ +

( / )

More examples:
= That person is a teacher
( / )

= This (thing) is a table

( / )

= That (thing) is a bed

( / )

= That person is a man

( / )

= That person is a woman

( / )

= That (thing) is a car

( / )

= This (thing) is a tree

( / )

There are 1250 example sentences in Unit 1. All entries are linked to an audio
file. You can download all of these files in one package here.

Wow! That was an extremely difficult lesson. If you were to pick up another
Korean text book, I am sure the first chapter would be much easier than this.
Trust me though; learning this at the start will be very useful to you later on.
When I was learning how to speak Korean, it took me months to realize some
of these things (not because they were hard, but because I was using a text
book that never taught me the reason why things are the way they are in
Korean).

Before you move on, make sure you understand the simple Korean sentence
structure presented in this first lesson. Also, remember that the sentences
not in parentheses are technically incorrect (or very very uncommon)
because they have not been conjugated.

Okay, I got it! Take me to the next lesson! Or,

Click here for a workbook to go along with this lesson.

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