Lesson Transcript

Hi, everyone! Welcome to Ask K-jin. My name is K-jin.
안녕하세요, K-Jin입니다. (Annyeonghaseyo, keijinimnida.)
In this series, I'll answer your Korean questions. Today, I picked questions related to Korean grammar.
Here's the first question: "Do I need to learn grammar to speak Korean?"
As a teacher, I would say "Yes."
Yes, if you learn Korean grammar, that will actually make your life easier. Imagine you learned one phrase from a Korean drama, and you learn this phrase, 가자 (gaja), and the subtitle was like "Let's go, let's go." Okay, now you learned how to say "let's go." If you don't learn grammar, well, you learn this phrase, and that's it. But if you learn the grammar and if you know how to form these kinds of phrases just by replacing the verb, you can make thousands of phrases.
Now, let me show you some examples.
Do you know 가 (ga) is from 가다 (gada), meaning "to go"?
So 가 (ga) basically means "to go" or "go."
자 (ja), 자 (ja), 자 (ja), it means "let's."
That's why 가자 (gaja) means "let's go."
How was it formed? First, get the verb stem, and you just put 자 (ja) at the end.
For example, you have 먹다 (meokda), it means "to eat." And what is the verb stem here? It's very simple. Korean verbs always end with 다 (da) at the end; just remove 다 (da) and you only have 먹 (meok), right? 먹 (meok) is the stem. So the verb without 다 (da) is the stem.
먹 (meok), 먹 (meok)
먹 (meok) is the stem.
Now we get the stem, and let's just put 자 (ja) at the end. 자 (ja)
먹자 (meokja)
먹 (meok) "to eat"; 자 (ja) "let's."
So, 먹자 (meokja) means "let's eat."
By learning this grammar, now you just need to replace this first step and make thousands of Korean phrases.
가자 (gaja), 먹자 (meokja), 보자 (boja) "let's watch"... or, what verb do you want to use?
읽자 (ilkja).
읽다 (ilkda) means "to read," So let's read, 읽자 (ilkja), see?
So actually, learning grammar sounds hard, but actually, actually, actually, learning grammar will make you speak more Korean.
Here's the second question: Is Korean grammar difficult to learn?
I don't think this question has an answer; it depends on the person. If someone is a Japanese speaker, maybe Korean grammar is very easy because Korean grammar and Japanese grammar have many things in common. And if someone is a Turkish speaker, well, I heard in Turkish there are some particles, so they can understand Korean particles more easily and for them, Korean grammar would be easy. But if you are an English speaker and you only speak English, I would say yes, Korean grammar might be hard because Korean and English are very different.
First, the word order is different. English is SVO language (subject-verb-object); for example, "I like apples." But in Korean, well, the order is different, Korean is SOV language (subject-object-verb).
저는 사과를 좋아해요 (Jeoneun sagwareul joahaeyo).
저는 (Jeoneun), "I"; 사과를 (sagwareul), "apples"; 좋아해요 (joahaeyo), "like." This is how we say it.
So as a beginner, you might be confused, like, Oh, the word order is different. And also in English, there's no particles, like subject-marking particles, object-marking particles, topic-marking particles, but there are some particles like that in Korean, so that might be difficult for you. But the good thing is, in Korean, we don't have genders for the words like verb, adjective, or nouns, we don't have genders, and also our tense is so simple. So simple!
And another good thing is we don't really use plurals. For example, it's candy. One candy -> candies; the spelling changes. But in Korea, well, you don't really use the plural forms. Even though there are many candies, it's just candy, 사탕 (satang).
If you really want to say the plural form, then you only need to put 들 (deul) after the noun, like 사탕들 (satang-deul) "candies," 책들 (chaek-deul) "books," but we don't really use it.
For us, being plural or singular is not so important. So, in Korean, I think some grammars are really easy for you. We don't really care, we don't even have the articles like "a book" or "an umbrella," or like, "the"... we don't have that kind of thing. So, you can ignore them and just say a noun. So, there are some easy parts and difficult parts. So, it's up to you, it depends on the person. But, if you're a beginner, don't worry too much. I really want to encourage you as a teacher. Don't think about the difficult parts. See the bright future only at first, because when we speak Korean, we actually use a lot of parts and use the simple grammar. So, at the beginning, you can only use the easy grammars. So, don't worry. Don't worry. Don't worry.
Here's the last question: How many tenses are there in Korean grammar?
The first tense that I want to introduce is present tense. It's 아 / 어 / 여(요) (-a/eo/yeo(-yo)).
아 / 어 / 여(요) (-a/eo/yeo(-yo)) is present tense in Korean. By the way, 요(-yo) can be omitted if you want to say casually with your friends. So, it can be 아 / 어 / 여 (-a/eo/yeo), or 아 / 어 / 여(요) (-a/eo/yeo(-yo)), which is standard polite.
And present tense is very, very, very, very, very, very useful because for the future, when you talk about the future, you can use present tense.
"I go to school," 학교에 가요 (hakgyoe gayo).
학교에 가요 (hakgyoe gayo) means "I go to school," but if you say, 내일 학교에 가요 (naeil hakgyoe gayo), "I go to school tomorrow," then it becomes future tense. How easy is it?
And it can also be present progressive.
For example, "What are you doing now?" Someone is calling you and saying, "What are you doing?" 지금 뭐해요? (Jigeum mwohaeyo?)
지금 뭐해요? (Jigeum mwohaeyo?) "What are you doing?"
And I say, 밥 먹어요 (bam meogeoyo).
밥 먹어요 (bam meogeoyo).
밥 먹어요 (bam meogeoyo) means "I'm eating." And I'm using present tense, but it can be present progressive - "I'm eating."
So present tense is very useful, which can be used for present, present progressive, or the future. So how simple is it?
The next tense that I want to introduce is past tense. Yes, it's 았 / 었 / 였어(요) (-ass/eoss/yeoss-eo(-yo)).
았 / 었 / 였어(요) (-ass/eoss/yeoss-eo(-yo)), yes, it's past tense.
요(-yo) can be omitted if you want to say casually, so it's up to you, if you talk with your friends, remove 요(-yo); and if you want to speak politely, put 요(-yo) at the end. So it's a past tense.
Another tense is this, future tense:
-(으)ㄹ 거야 (-(eu)l geo-ya) or 거예요 (geo-ye-yo)
Or, -(으)ㄹ 게요 (-(eu)l-ge(-yo)) can be used for the future tense too, but the basic main future tense is the first line, -(으)ㄹ 거야 (-(eu)l geo-ya) or -(으)ㄹ 거예요 (-(eu)l geo-ye-yo)
This 거야 (geo-ya) is the casual form, and 거예요 (geo-ye-yo) is the polite form.
That's it for this lesson. Today I answered three questions about topics related to Korean grammar. Thanks for watching. I'm Keijin, and I'll see you on KoreanClass101.com.
다음 시간에 봐요! (Da-eum si-gan-e bwa-yo!)

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