Hello!
In this lesson you will learn
how to combine irregular verbs and adjectives
with sentence endings, suffixes, particles,
and grammatical constructions.
Just like any other language,
Korean also has irregular verbs and adjectives.
They can be divided into six categories.
When a verb or an adjective stem
ends with ㅂ, ㄷ, ㅅ, ㅎ, and ㅡ
are followed by a vowel,
something happens to these consonants.
They are either replaced by another letter
or they just get vanished.
Also, when a verb or an adjective stem
that ends with ㄹ
is followed by ㅅ, ㄴ, or ㅡ
these letters drop.
Keep in mind that not all verbs and adjectives
whose stem ends with
these consonants are irregular.
Let’s learn how to conjugate irregular verbs and adjectives
whose stem ends with ‘ㅂ’.
When they are followed by a vowel
‘ㅂ’ changes to ‘우’
Take a look at how you can use them
with sentence endings, different particles
and grammatical constructions.
'가깝다' is an adjective.
'가까워요'
'가까웠어요'
'가까우세요'
'가까워서…'
All these grammatical constructions
start with a vowel.
‘어’, ‘어’, ‘으’, and ‘어’
That’s why when we attach them to the stem ‘가깝’
‘ㅂ’ changes to ‘우’
and now our stem is ‘가까우’ not ‘가깝’, okay?
And it ends with a vowel ‘우’.
That is why here you need to use ‘~세요’
instead of ‘~으세요’.
There are two exceptions to the rule.
A verb ‘돕다’ - ‘to help’
and an adjective ‘곱다’ ‘lovely’, ‘beautiful’
When their stem is followed by a vowel ‘ㅏ’
‘ㅂ’ changes to ‘오’ not ‘우’, okay?
‘도와요’ and ‘고와요’
As I mentioned earlier
not all verbs and adjectives
whose stem ends with ‘ㅂ’ are irregular.
Most of them are regular.
For example,
a verb ‘잡다’ - ‘to catch’.
When its stem is followed by a vowel
‘ㅂ’ does not change to ‘우’.
‘잡아요’, ‘잡았어요’, ‘잡으세요’, ‘잡아서…’
Pause the video.
Read these sentences for yourself
and try to translate them into English.
Once you are done play the video again
to see my translation.
‘오늘은 날씨가 더워요.’
‘The weather is hot today.’
‘제 할머니께서 저를 도우세요.’
‘My grandmother is helping me.’
‘제 친구가 저를 도와요.’
‘My friend is helping me.’
Here ‘ㅂ’ is changed to ‘우’
because it is followed by a vowel
which is not ‘아’.
I used an honorific particle ‘~(으)세요’
to show respect to grandmother.
And here ‘ㅂ’ is changed to ‘오’
because it is followed by ‘아’
In the next two sentences I used regular verbs
‘잡다’ - ‘to catch’
and ‘씹다’ - ‘to chew’
‘저는 물고기를 잡았어요.’
‘I caught a fish.’
and ‘저는 음식을 씹어요’
‘I'm chewing food.’
You will find more regular and
irregular verbs and adjectives
at the end of this lesson
and also in the description box
of the previous lesson.
Okay, the next category is verbs and adjectives
whose stem ends with ‘ㄷ’.
When the stems are followed by a vowel
‘ㄷ’ changes to ‘ㄹ’
‘듣다’
‘들어요’, ‘들었어요’, ‘들으세요’, ‘들어서...’
And when regular verb and adjective stems
are followed by a vowel
‘ㄷ’ does not get changed.
‘받다’
‘받아요’, ‘받았어요’, ‘받으세요’, ‘받아서…’
Pause the video and try to translate
these sentences into English.
‘제가 음악을 5시까지 들었어요.’
‘I listened to music until 5 o’clock.’
‘제 여동생이 저한테 질문을 물었어요.’
‘My younger sister asked me a question.’
‘제가 오늘은 친구한테서 선물을 받았어요.’
‘Today I got a present from a friend.’
and ‘할아버지께서 문을 닫으세요.’
‘Grandfather is closing a door.’
The next category is verbs and adjectives
whose stem end with ‘ㅅ’.
When they are followed by a vowel
‘ㅅ’ disappears.
‘짓다’
‘지어요’, ‘지었어요’,
‘지으세요’, not ‘지세요’. Okay?
And ‘지어서…’
You can think of this as an exception
And on the right hand side
the verb ‘웃다’ is regular.
So, nothing happens to ‘ㅅ’
when it’s followed by a vowel.
Again, there are four sentences.
Pause the video and try
to translate them into English.
It’s a good practice for you.
So, don’t skip it.
Okay,
‘제 부모님께서 작년에 집을 지으셨어요.‘
작년 means ‘last year’
and it’s pronounced as
[ jang nyon ] not [ jak nyon ], okay?
If you read it as [ jak nyon ]
then you should watch the lesson #5.
This sentence means
‘Last year my parents built a house.‘
‘이 가방이 나아요.‘
‘This bag is better.‘
‘교수님께서 웃으세요.‘
‘Professor is laughing.‘
‘학생들은 손을 씻었어요.‘
‘School students washed hands.‘
Here I did not use a plural form particle ‘~들’.
As I mentioned,
very often the plural form particle ‘~들’ is omitted.
The next category is
verbs and adjectives whose stems end with ‘ㅎ’.
When ‘ㅎ’ is followed by a vowel
‘ㅎ’ disappears.
In addition to that,
when ‘ㅎ’ is followed by a vowel ‘ㅓ’
this ‘ㅓ’ which is part of the stem
and another ‘ㅓ’ which is part of a particle,
suffix, or grammatical construction
they both disappear and get replaced
with a double vowel ‘ㅐ’
‘어때요’
‘어땠어요’
‘어때서…’
And here, since ‘ㅎ’ is not followed by a vowel ‘ㅓ’
this ‘ㅓ’ did not get replaced by the double vowel ‘ㅐ’.
And on the right hand side
you can see that in regular verbs and adjectives
‘ㅎ’ doesn’t drop.
‘넣어요’
‘넣었어요’
‘넣으세요’
‘넣어서…’
The next category is verbs and adjectives
whose stems end with the letter ‘ㅡ’.
When ‘ㅡ’ is followed by either ‘아’ or ‘어’
‘ㅡ’ disappears.
‘크다’ ‘커요’, ‘컸어요’, ‘커서...’
And when ‘ㅡ’ is followed by another vowel
for example, ‘ㅡ’
then this ‘ㅡ’ which is a part of the stem
just stays there.
It doesn’t go anywhere.
There is one exception to this rule.
When ‘ㅡ’ is preceded by ‘ㄹ’
or it’s better to say
when a verb or an adjective stem ends with ‘르’
and then followed by either ‘아’ or ‘어’
this ‘르’ changes to double ‘ㄹ’
‘빠르다’: ‘빨라요’, ‘빨랐어요’, ‘빨라서’
And lastly,
if a verb or an adjective stem
which ends with ‘ㄹ’
is followed by either ‘ㅅ’, ‘ㄴ’, or ‘ㅡ’
then ‘ㄹ’ drops.
So, we have a verb ‘팔다’ which mean ‘to sell’’.
There are two variants of polite formal sentence endings:
‘~ㅂ니다’ and ‘~습니다’, right?
So, if a stem ends with a consonant
we should attach ‘~습니다’.
This is the rule.
But since ‘~습니다’ starts with ‘ㅅ’
‘ㄹ’ drops.
Now we got a new stem '파'
without consonant ‘ㄹ’.
which ends with a vowel.
And because of that,
now we need to use the sentence ending ‘~ㅂ니다’
instead of ‘~습니다’.
Because the rule says,
if a stem ends with a vowel
we should use ‘~ㅂ니다’.
So, the final result is
‘팝니다’
not ‘팔습니다’ or ‘파습니다’
There are a few grammatical constructions
in the Korean language
that start with ‘ㄴ’.
For example, ‘~느라고’.
‘~느라고’ means ‘because of’.
It explains a reason.
But please, don’t take any notes about ‘~느라고’
because there are at least five ways to say
‘because of’ in the Korean language.
Each of these grammatical constructions
has a nuance and
they are used in different situations.
So, you should know exactly when to use them.
That’s why,
please don’t take any notes about ‘~느라고’.
I just picked this grammatical construction
to show you how to conjugate
irregular verbs and adjectives
when they are followed by a grammatical construction
that starts with ‘ㄴ’.
So, when ‘ㄹ’ is followed by ‘ㄴ’
‘ㄹ’ drops.
‘파느라고’
The next case is
when ‘ㄹ’ is followed by ‘으’
In such situations ‘ㄹ’ also drops.
Now our stem is ‘파’
which is why we need to attach
‘~세요’ or ‘~셔요’
instead of ‘~으세요’ or ‘~으셔요’.
‘파세요’, ‘파셔요’
However, there is one exception to this rule.
We haven’t learned
this grammatical construction yet.
But I thought it would be better
if I explain this exception in this lesson.
So, this grammatical construction is
‘~으려고’, ‘~려고’
It means ‘going to do something’.
So, when we attach it to verb and adjective stems
that end with ‘ㄹ’.
‘ㄹ’ doesn’t drop.
It stays there.
In addition to that,
instead of ‘~으려고’
you need to use ‘~려고’.
‘팔려고’
We will talk about this grammatical construction
in more detail in the future lessons.
Here is a list of most commonly used
irregular and regular verbs and adjectives.
And this is a list of new words
we are going to be using in the next lesson.