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
=I
= man
= woman
= that
= this
= that (when something is far away)
= 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
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 thestructure 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 . English learners are always confused with
the difference between and .
We use when we are talking about something from a previous sentence. 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.

Just like we can place or before a noun to describe this or that thing
= That person
= This person
= That man
= That woman
= That thing
= That thing
= This thing
= That chair
= That table

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, can be used to say am/is/are. So, if we want to say this:

That person is a doctor

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

That person doctor is

And then change 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
( / )
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.
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to make a post on our Forum!
4 Easy Ways to Make Korean Sentences
ON S E P T E M B E R 6 , 2 0 1 4 0 C O M M E N T S

Oh, hi!
So, you learned a few Korean words and phrases
But, how do you make sentences in Korean? People speak in sentences. Books
are written in sentences. Were going to need sentences over here!

If youre an English speaker, you know that Englishs basic sentence structure and
word order is.

SVO: Subject + Verb + Object

I + am + Kimchi
The Korean language, though, follows different structures and word orders. Ill
explain the top 4 basic Korean sentence structures and word orders below.
For your reference, remember the abbreviations..
S-subject
N-noun
V-verb
A-adjective
O-object
1. S + N. Subject + Noun
. Naneun haksaeng-ida I am a student.

While this structure is marked as S+ N, there is an arguable verb in there. Its the
ending ida which is often used and translated as the verb to be, but mostly its
an affirmative copula (a copula is a word that links the subject of a sentence to a
noun or adjective, and may or may not be a verb, but is translated as to be.)
To break this sentence down..
-Naneun I
haksaeng student
ida verb copula and often translated as to be
2. S + V. Subject + Verb
Sometimes you just want to say youre doing an action and context isnt
necessary.Whats Bob doing around this time? Bob sleeps. So, lets look at the
example below.
. yunaneun dallinda. Yuna runs. (Yuna- S, runs- V)

Yuna (a name)
Neun (topic marker and points to Yuna, because were taking about
her)
Dallinda Run
3. S + A. Subject + Adjective
. geuneun jeongmal meongcheong hae He is very stupid. (He-S,
stupid- A)

Geneun He (notice the neun?)

 jeongmal very
meongcheonghae stupid
Notice there is no verb ending here? Heres a very important rule to know: Korean
sentences must end with a verb (verb copula) or adjective. Lets try another
example.
Yunaneun jeongmal yeppeuda Yuna is very beautiful.
(Yuna-S beautiful-A)

yeppeuda beautiful
4. S + O + V. Subject + Object + Verb
This is the most common pattern of all the SOV pattern. Remember, English is
SVO, but with Korean, we usually end sentences with a verb or a verb copula. Just
start thinking in the following fashion.

I water drink. I food eat. I korean learn and youre good to go. Heres an
example.
Naneun Muleul Masinda I drink water. (I-S, water-O, drink-
V)

Lets break the sentence down.

Naneun I (See? Neun, the topic marker is back because were talking
about me.)
Muleul Water
Masinda Drink
So these are the 4 most common and basic Korean sentences youll hear, read and
write. Once you have these structures in mind, youll be able to start creating your
own Korean sentences which essentially what you want to do next.

Your next assignment: Start making Korean sentences by yourself.