Conjugations explained easy.

conjugation concentration learning korean verbs Jan 21, 2023

What the frick are conjugations?

 

Before I became a Korean teacher, I had never heard of this word.

I had been conscious that Korean is a much more expressive language than English.

I now realise that it's because we have so many more ways of expressing verbs and adjectives.

And I now know that it has a name!

 

Ladies and Gents. Introducing my friend. Mr Conjugation.

 

At Modu Korean, we call this a Verb Variation - it sounds less douchy than Conjugation ;)

Not to mention, it's a direct description too.

 

A variation of a verb = Verb Variation

 

In English, verbs hold limited information.

Let's take the word 'forget' as an example.

  1. Forget - Present-tense
  2. Forgot - Past-tense
  3. Forgetting - progressive (i.e. it's continuing to happen)
  4. Forgotten - past-tense, adjective version not a verb

 And that's about it.

 

If we wanted to express any other meaning, we would do it by saying more words in the sentence.

In Korean however, the single 'word' or variation can hold much more meaning.

 

In a single word, we can say:

  1. Did you forget?
  2. Don't forget
  3. Would she/he/I forget?
  4. I had forgotten (but now I remember)
  5. I think I'll forget it.
  6. You forgot right?

And many more.

 

But in English, we cannot, hence why I had to use multiple words to explain myself.

And of course, times everything by two because we have TWO languages in Korean casual (반말, ban-mal) and formal (존댓말, jon-daet-mal).

In this way, the Korean language is extremely specific and highly expressive!

Once you start getting familiar with these verb variations, you'll be able to express yourself like you've never done before!

 

Each post of this new blog series will delve into each conjugation we have in Korean. And each post will have a Youtube video for a spoke-explanation for those audio-learners.

 

  

For those of you wondering, the variations from above (forget) in the causal language would be:

  1. 까먹었어?
  2. 까먹지마
  3. 까먹겠어?
  4. 안 까먹겠지
  5. 까먹었었어
  6. 까먹을것같아
  7. 까먹었지?

Speak Korean like a native. Not a textbook.

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