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Korean phrases, by meaning
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Common questions about Korean
What's covered on this Korean page?
Twenty-two functional categories with Korean examples: tense and aspect (past in -았/었, future in -겠 or -ㄹ 거예요, the progressive -고 있다), modality (수 있다 for ability, 야 하다 for must, 고 싶다 for want), three negation strategies (안, 못, 지 않다), questions with -까/-요?, comparison with 보다, the connective endings -고, -서, -면, -지만, and 14 others. All glossed in Hangul with romanization.
What's the difference between 은/는 and 이/가?
이/가 marks the grammatical subject, often a freshly-introduced one. 은/는 marks the topic — the thing being talked about — and often signals contrast. 누가 왔어요? — 친구가 왔어요 (a friend, the new subject). But 친구는 키가 커요 (as for my friend, his height is tall) sets the friend as topic and uses 이/가 to introduce the new piece (height). Examples show the contrast directly.
Why do Korean adjectives conjugate?
Because they're functionally a kind of stative verb. 'To be pretty' is one word: 예쁘다, which conjugates 예뻐요 (polite present), 예뻤어요 (past), 예쁠 거예요 (future), 예쁘지 않아요 (negative). You don't need a separate copula 'to be' before an adjective — the adjective itself carries tense and politeness. Adjective vocabulary effectively doubles as verb vocabulary.
How do Korean speech levels work?
The verb ending signals how the speaker positions themselves toward the listener. -아/어요 (해요체) is the everyday polite form most learners start with. -ㅂ니다/-습니다 (합니다체) is more formal, used in news, business, and military contexts. -아/어 (해체) is plain, used among close friends or in writing. Switching levels mid-conversation is socially loaded; the page leans -아/어요 by default.
Do I need to read Hangul to follow along?
Helpful, and faster to learn than most learners expect — most people read it within a few hours. Every example shows Hangul, a Revised Romanization transliteration, and a word-by-word gloss. The page works without Hangul, but the romanization compresses sounds (ㅓ vs ㅗ, ㅡ vs ㅜ) that the script keeps cleanly distinct.
Sources for Korean
The grammatical descriptions on this page are informed by the following published reference and descriptive grammars. Grammatical facts themselves are not subject to copyright; the scholars who documented them deserve attribution.
- Yeon, Jaehoon & Brown, Lucien (2019). Korean: A Comprehensive Grammar, 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
- Martin, Samuel E. (2006). A Reference Grammar of Korean. Tokyo: Tuttle.
- Byon, Andrew Sangpil (2017). Modern Korean Grammar: A Practical Guide. London: Routledge.
- Song, Kyung-An (2010). "Various Evidentials in Korean." Proceedings of PACLIC 24, pp. 871–880.