Declension

From Jonathan Gardner's Korean Notebook
Jump to: navigation, search

In English, and many other languages, nouns change based on how they are used. For example, the noun "I" may turn up in the form "me" or "mine", or even "my". Only a handful of nouns are declined in English, compared to other languages where all the nouns are.

In Korean, there is no such thing as declension.

If it helps, you can think of the 체언 + 조사 combination as a declined noun. For instance, to decline 우리:

  • 우리 (topic)
  • 우리 (subject)
  • 우리 (object)
  • 우리 (3rd marker)
  • 우리 (also)

But honestly, this is kind of silly.