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Topic markers / Subject markers


	Now that I have put the title, I somehow will go on... It is not an easy subject and I guess every Korean teacher pushes it off as long as possible... What is the problem? Well there is none except that the whole concept is quite different from Western languages and that - though there are rules for these markers- they are often omitted in daily life except for situations where they can't be omitted or where politeness requires them, or where you might sound more educated using them... and that we together have to establish a system for ourselves which will help us to fit into all this :D


	After this encouraging introduction let's start.


	 In an English sentence word order is quite important. Let's take for instance:

 The bird eats the worm.
 We know from the word order, who is eating whom. The bird is the eater and the worm is the food. If we turn the words around like
 The worm eats the bird.
 the whole scenario is inversed. The worm is having the meal and the bird is the prey.
 So who comes first acts on who comes after. The early bird catches the worm...
 We could also express that differently. The first word (the noun preceding the verb) is the subject (the actor of the verb), the word following the verb is the object (the thing onto which the verb is acted, here it get's eaten)
 Let's do that whole sentence in Korean.
 새 - sae is the bird.
 벌레 - peolle is a worm or any kind of bug
새 벌레 먹어요. sae peolle mogeoyo.
 But unlike English, this is not quite clear. All we can say for sure is:
<ul>
 <li>There is a bird.</li>
 <li>There is a worm.</li>
 <li> Someone is eating. We don't know who. Could be even me eating both of them...</li>
</ul>
 Of course the context and common sentence will answer some of the questions. My appetite for worms is not so great. I find them 맛없어요 - mat-eops-eo-yo (they taste awful) 
But we can also clearly mark who is doing what in the sentence. To do so in Korean you need to add suffixes to the different words. One of them you learned already. You know already how to mark the victim. :D We simply add the object ending 을/를.
새 벌레를 먹어요. Sae peolle-reul meogeoyo.
 Now the worm can't escape its destiny... As for the bird it is not yet clear. To make sure that it won't be me snacking it, we can add a subject marker to the bird. Those subject markers are 
<table class="ui celled definition table">
 <tbody>
 <tr>
 <td>이</td>
 <td> (i) following a consonant</td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
 <td> 가</td>
 <td>(ga) after words ending in a vowel (as is the bird we are trying to safe)</td>
 </tr>
 </tbody>
</table>
새가 벌레를 먹어요. Sae-ga peolle-reul meogeoyo.
Now there is no more doubt.
One interesting point is, since the distinction between Subject and Object is based on endings (suffixes) the word order is not crucial. Whatever order we move the words in our Korean sentence it is pretty clearcut who eats whom. Now one rule we have to keep in mind: The verb comes at the end. But we still could say: 
벌레를 새가 먹어요. Peolle-reul sae-ga meogeoyo.
 And it still would make sense, still mean The bird eats the worm.
 We are one down :D That was still pretty easy... Now the Topic marker 
 The topic marker is something which we do not find at all in English. It is a bit like giving a title to our statement. The endings for topic markers are: 
은/는 eun (after consonant)
So I could say now, I want to talk about the bird. I want to make a statement about the bird. It is actually eating a worm right now. I mean it is eating - never mind for the rights of unprotected little worms in our environment. We care for the bird right now.
새는 벌레를 먹어요. Sae-neun peolle-reul meogeoyo.
 If I now want to say more things about the bird, other than that they are worm eaters, I don't need to use the topic marker again. If however I want to change the topic, maybe I want now to talk about the life expectancy of worms or I had enough of nature and want to tell you what my new car looks like... in this case I need to mark my new subject with the topic marker.
 So far so good. The interesting part comes now:
 The Subject of my sentences does not necessarily have to be my topic. e.g. My sentence The bird eats the worm. could be the last line of the Life story of Kim the rainworm (no idea what Koreans would call their rainworms..) Though maybe it is a bit late to mark the topic in the last sentence, maybe it should be the starting line of the story of Kim's son :D Anyway it is the following we would get:
 벌레는 새가 먹어요. Peolle-neun sae-ga meogeoyo. As for the worm, the bird eats it.
 But there is still more to it. The topic marker can introduce general statements as:
 Birds can fly. Water is blue...
 It also can make a contrast to a previous statement: 
I eat a lot of pizza. But what I really like is Kimchi.
 We will work on such complex statements later. But let's introduce here finally some personal pronouns.
Let's start with I. 저
 There is also 'na' but that is below our politeness level :D Let's stick to 'jeo' for now. Since you can omit 'jeo' in most sentences, we can safely assume that when you use it, you would want to emphasize it. 'As for me...' 'But I...' 'It is me, who...' So you can safely attach 'neun' to it. There might be cases where it doesn't carry 'neun', but the majority seem to be the 'joneun' situations.
 저는
uff, I am already running out of pronouns... maybe 우리는 - uri-neun = we. But that's about it.
 
 You might wonder how come. What happened to you, he, she, it , you (pl), they ... Well of course there are words, but to use them would be counted as rude in most situations. So I am not even going to teach them to you at present. :D
 A polite way of adressing a Korean person or to talk about a person is to call him / her by name + title.
 For title there is the general (from about 20 years of age upwards) 씨 - shi
 So if someone is called 수진 - Sujin for example (a feminine name) She would be called 수진 씨 - Sujin shi 
 Or 준서 Jungseo (male name) would be called 준서 씨 Jungseo shi
 Let's imagine a scenario: You are going to a restaurant together with Jungseo and you are about to order your food. You might ask him:
저는 피자를 먹어요, 준서 씨는요 ? - jeo-neun pija-reul meogeoyo, Junseo shineun-yo? I eat pizza, how about you (Jungseo) ?
 Did you notice the two topic markers? As for me I eat pizza, talking about you, what will you eat ?
 You might leave out the object marker on the pizza, but you can't do without the topic markers.
 We had this sentence before without pronoun. That was fine for a certain context. Let's say Jungseo asks you: What are you gonna eat? And you answer: I'll have pizza. - oh let's have this in Korean:
뭣을 먹어요? Mwos-eul meogeoyo? What do you eat?
피자를 먹어요. Pija-reul meogeoyo. I eat pizza.
 Or if you want to drop the object particles...
뭐 먹어요? Mwo meogeoyo? What do you eat?
피자 먹어요. Pija meogeoyo. I eat pizza.
 Here it is fine to not use any pronoun or topic marker, but if you contrast two different things or persons you need to use those markers. I eat this and you eat that. Kimchi is good but cheese is bad. etc.
 Having come so far, let me teach you another word, how to adress a group:
여러분 yeo-reo-bun ( everyone)
 And with that let me say:
여러분 안녕히 가세요 yeo-reo-bun an-yeonghi kaseyo ( goodbye, everybody)

Topic markers /Subject markers

adjective

adverb

conjunction

determiner

interjection

noun

number

particle

phrase

pronoun

reading exercise

sentence

verb

Reading 1: ㄴ, ㅏ, ㅣ, ㅂ

Reading 2: ㄷ, ㄹ, ㅐ, ㅁ, ㅓ, ㅔ

Reading 3: ㅗ, ㅜ

Reading 4: ㄱ, ㅑ, ㅕ, ㅒ, ㅖ, ㅛ, ㅠ, conjugating verbs and using the particle 에

Question	Answer
I	저
(Topic marking particle after vowels)	는
as for me / as far as I am concerned / I	저는
we	우리
when it comes to us/ as for us / we	우리는
Topic marking particle (after consonants)	은
you (all) / everyone	여러분
(as for/concerning) you (all) / everybody	여러분은 yeoreobu-neun
What do you guys eat?	여러분은 무엇을 먹어요? Yeoreobun-eun mueos-eul meogeoyo?
(As for me) I am eating Kimbap.	저는 김밥을 먹어요. Jeoneun kimbabeul meogeoyo.
(As for us) we drink beer.	우리는 맥주를 마셔요. Urineun maegjureul masyeoyo.
How about you, Sujin?	수진 씨는요? Sujin shineun-yo?
Sujin is eating potatoes. I eat rice.	수진 씨는 감자를 먹어요. 저는 밥을 먹어요. Sujin shi-neun kamja-reul meogeoyo. Jeo-neun pab-eul meogeoyo.
bird	새
I see a bird.	새를 봐요. Sae-reul pwayo.
I see a bird. Junseo can't see the bird.	저는 새를 봐요. 준서 씨는 새를 못봐요. Jeo-neun sae-reul pwayo. Junseo shi-neun sae-reul mot-pwayo.
worm / bug	벌레
The bird sees the worm. The worm can't see the bird.	새가 벌레를 봐요. 벌레는 새를 못 봐요. Sae-ga peolle-reul pwayo. Peolle-neun sae-reul mot pwayo. Sae-ga I used the Subject marker here. It is a simple statement. The bird sees the worm. I might have equally used the topic marker 'Sae-neun' but I am not obliged. However for the second sentence about the worm, I am changing topics. We are no longer speaking of what birds see. I need to mark the worm as my new topic! peolle-neun.
The bird eats the worm. I can't eat worms.	새가 벌레를 먹어요. 저는 벌레를 못 먹어요. Sae-ga peolle-reul meogeoyo. Jeo-neun peolle-reul mot meogeoyo.
not tasty / taste bad	맛없어요 mat-eobseoyo
Worms are not tasty.	벌레는 맛없어요. Peolle-neun mat-eobseoyo.
As for me bugs are not tasty.	저는 벌레가 맛없어요. Jeoneun peolle-ga mat-eobseoyo.
but	하지만
The bird sees the worm, but doesn't eat it.	새가 벌레를 봐요 하지만 안 먹어요. Sae-ga peolle-reul pwayo hajiman an meogeoyo.
Birds don't drink tea.	새는 차를 못 마셔요. Sae-neun cha-reul mot mash(y)eoyo. Why 'mot' ? Wouldn't that translate to 'Birds CAN'T drink tea ? Indeed, it would. But that is actually the hidden meaning of the statement. I don't want to say that there was beer and tea and for some reasons the birdies preferred the beer and neglected my Earl Grey... In Korean it feels better to use 'mot' here. Let's give you another example of a mistake English speakers are bound to do. If someone said something and you didn't hear it well... If you say: 'Sorry, I DIDN'T hear you' (in Korean of course) - it would sound very impolite. It would give the impression you never wanted to listen anyway. Whereas 'I COULDN'T hear you.' would convey the message, that there was so much noise or the speaker's voice was too soft... but you really wanted to hear the message. Anyway I'll teach you that sentence later in Korean. As for now just listen well :D
Worms don't eat pizza. (Worms can't eat pizza.)	벌레는 피자를 못 먹어요. Peolle-neun pija-reul mot meogeoyo. I might be wrong with that statement :D

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