LEARN KOREAN (한국어) [GRAMMAR] #1

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.

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 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).
If this weren't the case, we could do the following:

나는 펜을 있다 - I have a pen

However, the sentence above is incorrect. 있다 is an adjective and cannot act on an object like this. Therefore, the use of ~을 on 펜 is incorrect. To get around this, we can attach ~이/가 to the object instead of ~을/를 in sentences with 있다. This is one usage of the particle ~이/가; that is, to indicate the thing that a person "has" in sentences with 있다. Look at the following example sentences:

나는 펜이 있다 - I have a pen
나는 차가 있다 - I have a car
나는 잡지가 있다 - I have a magazine

Again, note that ~을/를 is not used to indicate the object that a person "has." Instead, ~이/가 are used.