Time for a treat. Let's finally learn something that makes sense :D
We had most of the vowels by now:
| 아 | 이 | 어 | 애 | 에 | 오 | 우 |
| a | i (ee) | eo (aw) | ae | e (ay) | o | u (oe) |
By adding a little horizontal stroke to a, eo ae or e they become ya, yeo, yae and ye. However this doesn't work with the letter i.
For the letters o and u a vertical stroke will change them to yo and yu.
| 야 | - | 여 | 얘 | 예 | 요 | 유 |
| ya | - | yeo (yaw) | yae | ye (yay) | yo | yu (yoe) |
We will practise this in detail. Right now I care only for 요 yo.
Yo is something very polite. You can add it to almost anything and make it sound polite.
Right time to mention, that Korean has 7 different levels of politeness. That doesn't mean that only the words directly adressed to the other person have to be polite. I might merely say: "My name is..." and offend somebody :D
I will - at least for now - stick to two levels of politeness:
- Informal polite (which you can use with almost anybody without getting slammed into your face.)
- Formal polite ( for superiors, bosses, teachers, elderly people)
Let's start with informal polite.
We have already seen some verbs, though you couldn't use them... Let's leave out the one for tie-binding and pick out the more practical ones.
| 오다 - (o-da) to come | 보다 (po-da) to see |
And let's add: 가다 - ( ka-da) to go
We have a new consonant here: ㄱ = k (at beginning /end) = g (middle)
The -da part in these Verbforms is what makes them an infinitive. So if we want to conjugate them we have to take it off.
Now conjugate is a big word. Koreans have one verbform for all persons. Pretty easy, isn't it?
When Korean people say they conjugate, they mean specifying the mood, the time and the politeness level of the verb.
For Informal polite we use 요 = yo.
| 가다 | - 다* | = 가 | + 요 | = 가요 |
| kada | - da* | = ka | + yo | = kayo |
*minus 다/da
kayo = I go / you go / he goes / she goes / we go...
Now we need of course a place to go to... what did we have...
| 바 - (pa) the pub | 바다 - (pa-da) the sea |
In order to go to these places we need to attach the particle 에 to the end of our noun.
바에 ( pa-e ) to the pub
바다에 ( pada-e ) to the sea
바에 가요. ( pa-e kayo.) I go to the pub. ( = You go to the pub. / He goes to the pub...)
바다에 가요. ( pada-e kayo.) I go to the sea. (= You go to the sea. / He goes to the sea...)
어디에 - (eodi-e) where(to)?
어디에 가요? (eodi-e kayo ?) Where are you going to?
Note that when you learned the word where (to) , it already had this particle attached.
