KOREAN - ON HOLD

Lesson 2

Nouns:
나라 = country

가방 = bag/backpack

창문 = window

잡지 = magazine

방 = room

냉장고 = refrigerator

개 = dog

강아지 = puppy

고양이 = cat

쥐 = rat

펜 = pen

전화기 = phone

커피 = coffee

식당 = restaurant

건물 = building

텔레비전 = television

미국 = USA

캐나다 = Canada

호텔 = hotel

학교 = school

은행 = bank

Adverbs
안 = inside

위 = on top

밑 = below

옆 = beside

뒤 = behind

앞 = in front

여기 = here

Verbs:
있다 = to be at a location

Adjectives:
있다 = to have something

Introduction

In Lesson 1 you learned about simple Korean particles. To review, you learned that:

~는 or ~은 are used to indicate the subject (or main person/thing) in a sentence.
~를 or ~을 are used to indicate the object in a sentence.

For example, in this sentence: "I ate a hamburger"

"I" is the subject of the sentence
"Hamburger" is the object
"Eat" is the verb

In this Lesson, you will learn about the particles ~이/가 and specifically how it can compare with ~는/은. In all situations, ~이 is attached to nouns in which the last letter is a consonant (like ~은) and ~가 is attached to nouns in which the last letter is a vowel (like ~는). For example:

책 ends in a consonant (ㄱ), so "~이" is added: "책이."
소파 ends in a vowel (ㅏ), so "~가" is added: "소파가."

But, in what situations should we use ~이/가? Before we get to that, I would like to teach you how to use the word "있다" in sentences. Let's get started.

있다: To have

The word "있다" has many meanings. To a beginner of Korean, we can simplify and generalize these meanings into two forms or usages:

있다 = to have
있다 = to be at a location

Let's talk about the first usage, "to have." In English, "to have" is a verb that can act on an object. For example:

I have a pen
I have a car

This usage of 있다 in Korean is an adjective. This is hard for a learner to wrap their head around. At this point, this is important to you for one reason.

You learned in Lesson 1 that sentences with adjectives cannot act on an object. Thus, you cannot have a word with the particle ~을/를 attached to it if the predicating word in a sentence is an adjective (because ~을/를 indicates an object in a sentence).