LEARN KOREAN (한국어) [GRAMMAR] #1

USING ADJECTIVES ~ㄴ/은

Alright, this won't help you understand those greeting words any better, but what you are about to learn is a major step in learning Korean. You should remember these two important facts:

•All sentences must end with either a verb or adjective
•All verbs/adjectives end with the syllable 다

Although both of those are true (and always will be), let's look at them more deeply:

•All sentences must end with either a verb or adjective. Yes, but verbs and adjectives can ALSO go elsewhere in a sentence. You learned this sentence:
저는 배를 원하다 - I want a boat

But what if you want to say: "I want a big boat." In that sentence, there is a verb and adjective. Where should we put the adjective? In Korean, this adjective is placed in the same position as in English. For example:
나는 배를 원하다 - I want a boat
나는 big 배를 원하다 - I want a big boat

Simple. So we just substitute the Korean word for big (크다) into that sentence?:
나는 크다 배를 원하다
Not correct. Not by a long shot.

Remember that second rule I taught you?:
•All verbs/adjectives end with the syllable 다 – Yes, but the version of the word with 다 as the last syllable is simply the dictionary form of that word and is rarely used. Every verb/adjective in Korean has a 'stem,' which is made up of everything preceding 다 in the dictionary form of the word. Let's look at some examples:

크다 = 크 (stem) + 다
작다 = 작 (stem) + 다
배우다 = 배우 (stem) + 다

Most of the time, when you deal with a verb/adjective, you eliminate 다 and add something to the stem.

When you want to make an adjective that can describe a noun, as in:

small boy
big boat
delicious hamburger

You must eliminate 다 and add ㄴ or 은 to the stem of the adjective.

Words in which the last syllable of the stem ends in a vowel (크다/비싸다/싸다) you add ㄴ to the last syllable.

Words in which the last syllable of the stem ends in a consonant (작다/좋다/많다) you add 은 to the stem:

Looking back to what we were trying to write before:
저는 크다 배를 원하다 - I want a big boat (incorrect)
저는 큰 배를 원하다 - I want a big boat (correct)

The key to understanding this is being able to understand the difference between the following:

음식은 비싸다 - The food is expensive
비싼 음식 - expensive food

The first example is a sentence. The second example is not a sentence. The second sentence needs more words in order for it to be a sentence. You need to add either a verb or adjective that predicates the noun of "expensive food." For example:
나는 비싼 음식을 먹다 - I eat expensive food
나는 비싼 음식을 좋아하다 - I like expensive food
비싼 음식은 맛있다 - Expensive food is delicious

More examples of using adjectives to describe nouns within a sentence:
나는 작은 집에 가다 - I go to the small house
나는 잘생긴 남자를 만나다 - I meet a handsome man
나는 많은 돈이 있다 - I have a lot of money

In all of those examples above, notice the difference in function between when an adjective is used to describe a noun compared to when it is used to predicate a sentence. For example:

나는 작은 집에 가다 - I go to the small house
그 집은 작다 - That house is small

Even though the adjective always acts as a descriptive word, in the cases when they are placed before nouns to describe them – those nouns are able to be placed anywhere in the sentence (for example, as the subject, object, location, or other places). This same thing happens in English, where I can have a simple sentence like this:
남자는 음식을 먹다 - The man eats food

I can use adjectives to describe each noun in the sentence. For example:
행복한 여자는 작은 차 안에 있다 - The happy girl is inside the small car

You will see some adjectives that end in 있다. The most common of these for a beginner are:
맛있다 - delicious
재미있다 - fun, funny

When an adjective ends in 있다 like this, instead of attaching ㄴ/은 to the stem, you must attach 는 to the stem. For example:
그 남자는 재미있는 남자이다 - That man is a funny man
나는 맛있는 음식을 먹다 - I eat delicious food

The difference here is due to what I call the 는 것 principle. For now, you do not need to think about why 는 is added instead of ㄴ/은. It is sufficient at this point to just memorize it as an exception. This concept is related to verbs being able to describe nouns. For example:

"The man who I met yesterday will go to the park that I want to go to"

However, this is very complex and is the whole basis to the 는 것 principle that I mentioned earlier.