Grammar/English to Korean

Introduction

This is focused on helping a native English speaker, who really doesn't understand their own grammar, learn enough grammar that they can understand Korean grammar. Along the way, we'll learn Korean grammar.

Note that without grammar, you'll be lost in Korean. Koreans simply do not speak anything remotely similar to English. If I were to directly translate what Koreans said, none of it would make any sense because they rely on grammatical forms that we simply aren't used to.

Parts of Speech

Every word in any language has a "Part of Speech" assigned to it. This describes how the word can be used. English parts of speech are, roughly:

• Nouns: Things that do things or that have things done to them. "Chair", "air", "heat", "running".
• Verbs: Words that describe what is being done. "walk", "run", "live", "be".
• Adjectives: Words that tell you what kind of nouns you have. "fat", "hungry", "old", "that Thomas ate".
• Adverbs: Words that tell you how the verb is being done. "quickly", "carefully".

There are other words that play a minor role, things almost unique to English. These we call articles or participles. When learning Korean, they really aren't important since they simply don't translate.

Sentence Structure

In English, you have a few sentence patterns that we stick to faithfully.

• Statements look like subject - verb - object - phrases. "I ate the hot dog in my bedroom."
• Questions reorder the words: verb - subject - object - phrases. "Did you eat the hot dog in your bedroom?" Note that English goes pretty crazy here with the verbs. Some appear before the subject, and others appear after.

Everything falls into the above pattern.

In Korean, there is only one sentence pattern.

• topic - subject - phrases - object - verb.

Let's quickly cover what all these parts of the sentence mean.

• verb: This is the central connecting thing in the sentence. It tells how the subject, object, and phrases interrelate --- what action is occurring.
• subject: The subject is a noun that is doing the action verb. "I walk" - "I" am the subject. "He eats hot dogs" - "He" is the subject.
• object: This is the noun that the action is being done to. Not all verbs require or even allow an object. "He eats hot dogs" -- "hot dogs" is the object.
• Phrases: These phrases qualify where, when, how, etc... the action took place. These are really very much like adverbs, but they are usually entire phrases. "He ate hot dogs in his room" -- "in his room" is a phrase that describes where the action took place.

Where do adjectives and adverbs show up? Adjectives can be attached to any noun, anywhere. Adjective phrases are entire phrases that describe a noun, and can likewise appear anywhere. Adverbs can also show up anywhere, but prefer to be close to the verb.

The same is true for Korean. Adverbs can go almost anywhere. All nouns can have adjective phrases.

On Adjective Phrases

Adjective phrases in English start with "who", "that", "which", etc... "The baker who likes to bake is happy indeed." The subject is the baker. What kind of baker? The baker "who likes to bake". Note that the rest of the adjective phrase "who likes to bake" is almost a sentence unto itself. "The baker like to bake." is a complete sentence. Now, it is not the sentence, just the adjective phrase that describes which bakers we are talking about.

In Korean, they use adjective phrases all the time. It's a sort of pasttime for them: How much can they say in the adjective phrase? I have found extremely long sentences in Korean that roughly translate to something like "the X which does Y to Z which are called B by those who are like C were gone." We simply don't do that in English because it's confusing. But Koreans love to do it, and they do it when talking, so you have to be really good with the phrases.

Why do they like to do this? I don't know, but I think it has to do with the passive-aggressive nature of East Asian politeness. One of the rules in Korean society is you are never too direct with someone. You always leave a lot of wiggle room for personal interpretation and introspection. You know those fortune cookies that say, "Confucius say"? Well, Confucius was a real guy, and he did say a lot of esoteric things, and the Koreans really respect Confucius. It stands to reason they like to talk like him too.

Regardless, you need to master adjectival phrases, almost before you master basic sentence forms.

Sentence Endings

For something that really isn't that big of a deal, English speakers tend to focus on Korean sentence endings. Really, it's not a big issue, and most of the time, they have already finished their sentence anyway so they're just looking for something to stick on the end that doesn't sound to weird.

Yes, you should learn the sentence endings. No, you don't have to be good at them to communicate. For a beginner, identify 2-3 sentence endings and use them. The rest will come naturally. Yes, each of them has subtleties and such, but Koreans really don't read that much in to them.

In English, we simply don't have sentence endings. Well, except for things like, "isn't it?" or "you know?" or "that's what I'm talking about." "Ice cream is great on a sunny day, isn't it?" "She really let herself go, you know?" "Give me some pizza with extra cheese, that's what I'm talking about!" So I guess in English we do have sentence endings, but they are just complete sentence or phrases.

Conclusion

You really don't need to know much English grammar to figure out Korean grammar. So don't get too hung up on it if you don't know it. But do take the time to know what subject, object, noun, adjective, etc.. all mean.