LEARN KOREAN (한국어) [GRAMMAR] #1

WHEN AND WHERE

Anytime you put a word in a sentence that indicates when or where something is taking place, you must add the particle 에 to the end of that word. Keep in mind, however, that 에 is not the only particle that can go at the end of words of position or time. There are other particles that can go at the end of these words to indicate from when/where something occurred, until when/where, etc. For now, though, lets just talk about 에.

This is very important. Even though all places (park, house, hospital, school, office, room, kitchen, etc.) are also nouns, when they are being talked about as a place, the particle 에 must be attached to them. Notice the difference between the following two sentences:

저는 병원을 지었어요 - I built a hospital
저는 병원에 갔어요 - I went to the/a hospital

In the first sentence, "hospital" is the thing that you are building – so it is an object, which requires you to use the 을/를 particle.
In the second sentence, the hospital is the place in which you went to – so it is a place, which requires it to have the 에 particle.

However, if you wanted to say where you built that hospital, you could say this:

저는 병원을 공원 옆에 지었어요 - I built a hospital beside the park

In addition to this, any word that indicates when something is taking place, needs to have the Korean particle 에 attached to it. For example:

저는 화요일에 가겠어요 - I will go on Tuesday
저는 저녁에 공부했어요 - I studied in the evening
저는 가을에 공원 옆에 병원을 지었어요 - I built a hospital beside the park in the fall

The best part about Korean adverbs is that they can essentially be placed at any place in the sentence. The only place they cannot be placed is at the end of the sentence – because a sentence must always end in an adjective or verb. They could even be placed at the beginning of a sentence:

여름에 저는 공부하겠어요 - I will study in the summer

Korean people don't add ~에 when using 오늘 (today), 내일 (tomorrow) and 어제 (yesterday):

저는 한국에 오늘 도착했어요 - I arrived in Korea today
저는 도서관에 어제 갔어요 - I went to the library yesterday
저는 내일 한국어를 공부하겠어요 - I will study Korean tomorrow.