Learning Korean (한국어 배우기) [COMPLETE]

Unit 1.7 - Korean Irregulars (4)

ㄹ Irregular: Adding ~ㄹ/을 to words

You have yet to learn any situation where you would need to add ~ㄹ/을 to a stem, so don't worry about this too much now right now. Try to see how the irregular works within these examples, and I will re-present these again when you learn how to deal with adding ~ㄹ/을.

Normally (just like with other similar additions), you would add ~ㄹ to the stem of a word ending in a vowel, and ~을 to the stem of a word ending in a consonant. For example:

작다 + ~ㄹ/을 = 작을
크다 + ~ㄹ/을 = 클

However, when you add ~ㄹ/을 to a stem of a word that ends in ㄹ, the ㄹ is dropped and ㄹ is attached directly to the stem. In effect, you removed something and replace it with exactly the same thing. For example:

갈다 + ㄹ/을 = 갈
빨다 + ㄹ/을 = 빨

Make sure that you realize that you have not learned any grammatical principle where "~는" is added. The addition of "~는" is not the diary form conjugation that you learned in Lesson 5.
That conjugation is ~ㄴ/는다 - where, depending on the stem of the verb, you might need add ~ㄴ다 or ~는다. The "~는" addition is not the same, and will be talked about in later lessons.

Just to make my point clear - the diary form present tense conjugation of "열다" is "연다" (based on the information earlier). It is not 여는다.

Adding ~ㄴ/은 to Adjectives

I mentioned this in some of the sections above, but I would like to organize it all here. In Lesson 4, you learned how to add ~ㄴ/은 to adjectives to describe an upcoming noun.
Some irregulars will come into play when doing this because of the possibility of adding a vowel to a stem. Let's look at the word "어렵다" as an example. 어렵다 has a 받침, which means that ~은 must be added (instead of ~ㄴ). Therefore, we end up with:

어렵은

Because of this, now we now have the final consonant "ㅂ" followed by a vowel, which causes the ㅂ irregular to be applied. The correct conjugation of 어렵다 + ~ㄴ/은 is therefore "어려운."

Below is a table that shows how irregular adjectives can change because of adding ~ㄴ/은:

Irregular Word Apply? Application
ㅅ Irregular 낫다 (better) YES 나은
ㄷ Irregular NA NA NA
ㅂ Irregular 쉽다 (easy) YES 쉬운
ㅡ Irregular 바쁘다 (busy) NO 바쁜
르 Irregular 빠르다 (fast) NO 빠른
ㄹ Irregular 길다 (long) YES 긴

That's it! Wow that is a lot of irregulars.

Note that these irregulars do not apply to word stems ending with a four-letter syllable. For example, the ㅅ irregular does not apply to 없다, which you will learn about in the next lesson.

Everybody is confused when they learn these irregulars. Eventually you will reach a point where all of these will come natural to you. Whenever you learn a new word where the stem ends in ㅅ/ㄹ/ㅂ/ㄷ/르/ㅡ just make a mental note about how you should conjugate that word in the future.

If you can't memorize them all right now, just try to understand them, which will allow you to recognize them later. Eventually, you will memorize them simply from using and hearing them so much.

End of Unit 1.7 ^^

Btw.. until May.. I might only upload once a week. Sorry for that (T^T)