Colloquial Ending Reductions: 할려고, 하구, -구

Some of the most common things you'll hear in spoken Korean are not in any conjugation table. A friend says 밥 먹구 갈게 where the book taught 먹고. Someone says 뭐 좀 물어볼려고 where the standard is 물어보려고. These are colloquial ending reductions — reshapings of verb endings that live in real speech, and they come in two flavors that you must keep apart: some are simply casual-standard (fine in speech, spelled out in writing), and some are outright nonstandard (비표준) — so common your ear will accept them, yet marked wrong on a test or in an essay.

Getting this distinction right is the whole point of the page. Unlike the pronoun contractions — every one of which is fully standard — the forms here split down the middle. Mislabel them and you'll either freeze up when you hear them, or, worse, "learn" a nonstandard form as correct and write it into your homework.

The reframe: this is "wanna, gonna, -in'"

English speakers already run a two-tier system without noticing. "Going to" becomes gonna, "want to" becomes wanna, "-ing" becomes -in' ("what're you doin'?"). In casual speech these are prestige-neutral — nobody thinks less of you for saying gonna. But write "I'm gonna analyze the data" in a research paper and it reads as an error. Korean's ending reductions work the same way: recognizing them is comprehension; reproducing them in formal writing is a mistake. The catch is that Korean's version has an extra layer — some reductions (like 하구) are merely casual, while others (like 할려고) are actively stigmatized as 비표준 even though everyone says them. We'll flag which is which.

The 오 → 우 raising: 하고 → 하구, and the -구 endings

The single most pervasive reduction is the raising of a final 오 to 우. The connective ending -고 ("and / and then") becomes -구 in casual speech, and the same thing happens to the verb 하고, the conjunction 그리고, and the trailing tag -고요.

The trailing -구요 deserves its own note. It's the casual reduction of -고요, the little "…and also / oh, and" tag speakers add on to keep a turn going politely:

그러니까 → 그니까 / 그니깐

The all-purpose "so / that's why / I mean" connector 그러니까 gets squeezed in fast speech to 그니까, and often gets a final ㄴ tacked on as 그니깐. It's a discourse workhorse — filler, justification, and "here's my point" all at once.

The full form 그러니까 is the one you write. 그니까/그니깐 are spoken-only; you'll hear them constantly in conversation and in dramas, but they don't belong in a presentation's conclusion.

뭐라고 → 뭐라구 / 머라구

The re-ask "What? / What'd you say?" — standard 뭐라고 — reduces its -고 to -구 by the same raising rule, and its 뭐 can slide to 머 (see the contractions page), giving 뭐라구 and, very casually, 머라구.

The big one: -(으)려고 → -(으)ㄹ려고 / -(으)ㄹ라고 (NONSTANDARD)

Now the reduction you must handle carefully. The intention/purpose ending is standardly -(으)려고 ("intending to / about to"): 하려고, 가려고, 먹으려고. But in ordinary speech an extra ㄹ creeps in, giving -(으)ㄹ려고 (하려고 → 할려고, 가려고 → 갈려고), and it drifts further to -(으)ㄹ라고 (할라고, 갈라고, 먹을라고).

These are nonstandard (비표준). The 표준어 is, without exception, -(으)려고. And yet you will hear 할려고 and 할라고 from native speakers all day long — the ㄹ-insertion is one of the most widespread "errors" in the language, so common that many speakers don't realize it isn't standard. You need to recognize it instantly, and you need to not write it.

The ✗ forms below are what you'll hear; the ✓ is what you write:

• ✗ 나 지금 나갈려고. → ✓ 나 지금 나가려고. (na jigeum nagaryeogo — "I'm about to head out now.")
• ✗ 밥 먹을라고 했는데. → ✓ 밥 먹으려고 했는데. (bap meogeuryeogo haenneunde — "I was going to eat, but…")
• ✗ 뭐 사갈라고? → ✓ 뭐 사가려고? (mwo sagaryeogo — "What are you planning to buy and bring?")

Why English speakers get stuck here

There are two opposite traps, and both come from these forms being absent from textbooks:

Freezing (comprehension failure). You hear 할려고 or 갈라고, scan your memory for a verb "할리다" or "갈라다," find nothing, and lose the sentence. The fix is to strip the extra ㄹ mentally: 할려고 → 하려고 → 하다, 갈라고 → 가려고 → 가다. Once you know the ㄹ-insertion pattern, these decode instantly.

Fossilizing (production error). You pick 할려고 up from speech, assume it's the real form, and write it in an essay — where a Korean teacher marks it wrong. This is the more damaging outcome, because a fossilized nonstandard form is hard to unlearn. Keep 할려고 filed under "heard, never written."

Common Mistakes

1. Writing -구 into formal prose. The 오→우 raising is spoken-only; formal writing takes -고.

2. Writing 할려고 in homework or an essay. The standard purpose ending is -려고, with no extra ㄹ.

3. Mis-hearing the verb inside 할라고 / 갈라고. Don't hunt for a nonexistent verb — peel off the inserted ㄹ and you get the real one.

• Heard: 어디 갈라고? → parse as 어디 가려고? (eodi garyeogo — "Where are you off to?"), verb 가다.
• Heard: 뭐 할라고? → parse as 뭐 하려고? (mwo haryeogo — "What are you about to do?"), verb 하다.

4. Using 그니까 in a formal or written context. In a presentation or report, the connector is 그러니까 (or the more formal 그러므로), never the reduced 그니까.

Key Takeaways

• The 오→우 raising (-고 → -구, 하고 → 하구, 그리고 → 그리구, -고요 → -구요) is casual-standard: fine in speech, written as -고.
• 그러니까 → 그니까/그니깐 and 뭐라고 → 뭐라구 are the same spoken-only reductions.
• -(으)려고 → 할려고/할라고 is nonstandard (비표준) — extremely common in speech, but wrong in writing and on tests. The standard is always -(으)려고.
• Decode a heard 할려고/갈라고 by stripping the extra ㄹ back to -려고.
• The trap is bidirectional: freezing when you can't parse the reduction, or fossilizing it into your own writing. Hear these; don't write them.