When asking questions, Korean people use the negative form very often.
For example, “배 안 고파?” (Are you not hungry?) is used, whereas in English we would normally ask, “Are you hungry?”
(배고파?).
When Koreans use negative questions, you should still think of
the question as if it were not in the negative form. Negative questions are
often used because they are considered to be ‘indirect’ and therefore less
confronting. Using negative questions – rather than positive ones – will often
make your Korean sound more natural in many situations.
One aspect of negative questions that can be very confusing to non-native
speakers of Korean is that when answering, the opposite occurs from what happens in English. For instance, if someone asks you in English, “Aren’t you hungry?” and you are feeling full, you respond by saying “No, I’m not
hungry”. However, in Korean you would reply with “Yes, I’m not hungry (어,
배 안 고파).” because you are agreeing with the negation, i.e. agreeing that
you are indeed not hungry. On the other hand, if you are hungry, then you
would reply with “No, I’m hungry (아니, 배고파).” which may sound very
strange in English, but it is the correct and natural way to respond in Korean.
If you are still confused about how to respond to a negative question in
Korean, one good strategy is to just answer the question with a straight
statement, without the ‘yes’ or ‘no’. For example, “배 안 고파 (I’m not
hungry)”.
[A/N: Same lesson of Using "Yes and No"]
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KEY TO KOREAN (키 투 코리얀)
RandomWelcome to KEY TO KOREAN! Your story of reliable korean lessons. This book will help you learn, speak, and write useful Korean words. Together, Let's Learn Korean! Some lessons are from my notes and others are come from different sources. I only co...
