Learning Korean (한국어 배우기) [COMPLETE]

Unit 1.5 - Korean Conjugation

Basic Conjugation: Past, Present, Future

Every sentence that you have learned, in the units, has not been conjugated. So they would never actually be used in Korean. The good news, however is that conjugating in Korean is much easier than other languages (including English and especially French!).

An important note before you begin

This lesson will show you how to conjugate past/present/future verbs in the most basic way. Although all of these conjugations are grammatically correct, they are rarely used in conversation. This form is sometimes called "diary form" because it is usually used when writing to yourself in a diary.
It is also used when writing a test, book (not in dialogue), research paper, newspaper article, magazine article, and other times when you are not speaking/writing to a specific audience. It is also sometimes called the "plain form". If you used this form in a sentence, you should use the informal "나," as this conjugation is seen as informal.

The sentences are neither formal or informal - as it is just relaying facts. When used like this, no specific person is the speaker, and nobody is getting directly spoken to. Therefore, you don't generally see "I".

Though not important in conversation, this "plain form" conjugation is incredibly important if you want to understand more complex grammar later on. I highly recommend you to understand the conjugations presented in this lesson before you move on.

The only part of speech that gets conjugated in Korean is verbs and adjective because a sentence must end in either a verb or adjective.

Let's look at how to conjugate verbs and adjectives into the past, present and future tenses.

Verbs
Present Tense

(복습)
When their is a 받침, you add ~는다 to the stem of the word:

먹다 = 먹는다 = to eat (먹 + 는다)
닫다 = 닫는다 = to close (닫 + 는다)

Examples
나는 밥을 먹는다 = I eat rice

When their is no 받침, you add ~ㄴto the last syllable followed by 다

배우다 = 배운다 = to learn (배우 + ㄴ다)
가다 = 간다 = to go (가 + ㄴ다)

Examples
나는 한국어를 배운다 = I learn Korean
나는 집에 간다 = I go home

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Before you learn this, you need to know something important. Korean grammar is based on adding things directly to verbs or adjectives to have a specific meaning.

Hundreds of grammatical principles are used by adding certain things to the stems of verbs and adjectives.
The following are added to the stems of verbs and adjectives to have specific meanings:

~ㄴ/은 후에 to mean "after"
~기 전에 to mean "before"
~기 때문에 to mean "because"
~아/어서 to mean "because"
~아/어야 하다 to mean "one must"
~아/어서는 안 되다 to mean "one shouldn't"

The list could go on and on forever.

Notice that some of these grammatical principles require the addition of "~아/어." Many grammatical principles require the addition of "~아/어" to the stem of a verb or adjective. Notice that the "slash" indicates that you need to choose what actually gets added to the stem. In some cases it is "~아", and in some cases it is "~어". The following is the rule that you can use to determine if you should add "~아" or "~어":