네가 v 니가

[iDoof]

I always thought the casual "you" was spelled 니가...but I occasionally see it being spelled as 네가. Can someone explain this for me?

Much appreciated!

[trutherous]

I'm sure Sean will be along shortly to clear this up for us. At the first Korean church I attended (back when all things Korean were new to me) when our pastor read or quoted the bible he always insisted on pronouncing all '네' forms of 'you' as '니' --which really made it hard for me to follow along in the text. I felt sure he was doing it just to throw me off, being the only white guy in the congregation. Anyway I asked about it and people told me that a lot of Koreans got 내 and 네 confused when listening to the sermon so the pastor did that on purpose to make a distinction between the two. To this day that has been the only pastor I have ever seen do that.. I guess only his congregation couldn't tell the difference between 내 and 네

[manyakumi]

Alright, I'm here.

니 is a dialect word for 너 which came from Gyeongsang-do(province).
However, since 너 become 네 when the subject marker 가 follows,
니가 defeated 네가 because of the clearness in being heard, as George said.
Most of Korean people prefer to use 니가 instead of 네가 in verbal speaking nowadays.
Grammatically, 네가 is the right one.

Have fun learning Korean!


Sean.

[timandyou]

정말 감사합니다 Sean,
best,

Tim

[iDoof]

this was very helpful thank you!