LEARN KOREAN (한국어) [GRAMMAR] #1

못하다: TO DO SOMETHING POORLY

Alright, this is where it gets hard. 잘하다 was easy. Let's do this step by step.

First of all, 못하다 has the opposite meaning of 잘하다 – so it can be used to indicate that one generally is poor at something. For example:

나는 수영을 못해 - I am bad at swimming
저 학생은 공부를 못해 - That student does not study well

The difference between 못하다 and 못 is the same as the difference between 잘하다 and 잘. When you say a sentence like "나는 수영을 못해" it means that in general your ability to swim is bad. Because of this, you need to be careful about the type of verb you are using in this situation. For example, you couldn't really use the verb "to eat" in this situation, because that would mean that "in general, my ability to eat is bad." Instead, what you would probably want to say is that "I CAN eat, but because of some situation, I can't really eat right now." That is when you need to use 못 instead of 못하다.