giri neomu makhyeoseo jihacheori deo ppareugessdeora.

The traffic was so bad that I realized the subway would be faster.

Breakdown of giri neomu makhyeoseo jihacheori deo ppareugessdeora.

• ~이: subject particle
• 더: more
• 지하철: subway
• 너무: too

Questions & Answers about giri neomu makhyeoseo jihacheori deo ppareugessdeora.

What does 길이 너무 막혀서 mean literally, and how is it used?

Literally, 길이 막히다 means the road is blocked.

But in everyday Korean, it very often means traffic is bad / the roads are clogged / there’s a traffic jam. So 길이 너무 막혀서 is a very natural way to say something like:

• Because the traffic was so bad
• Since the roads were so jammed
• Because the road was terribly congested

So even though 길 literally means road or way, the whole expression is commonly used to talk about traffic conditions.

Why is it 길이, not 길을?

Because 막히다 is an intransitive/passive-style verb meaning to be blocked / to get clogged.

So the road is not the object being blocked; it is the thing that is in the blocked state. That is why it takes the subject marker 이/가:

• 길이 막히다 = the road is blocked / traffic is backed up

If you used 길을, that would suggest the road is the direct object of some action, which does not fit 막히다 here.

Why is it 막혀서 and not 막히어서?

It comes from:

• 막히다
  • -어서

When Korean combines these, the form contracts naturally:

• 막히어서 → 막혀서

This kind of contraction is very common in Korean. So 막혀서 is just the normal spoken and written form.