Hi!
Today you will learn how to make questions
in Korean using question words
such as where, when, why, how much, what,
what kind of, which, who, and how.
You will also learn
how to combine them with prepositions.
'Where is that book?'
그 책은 어디 입니까?
And how would you say,
'Where did you buy that book?'
Pause the video and give it a try.
So, here you need to use a preposition ~에서.
'From where... did you buy that book?'
그 책을 어디에서 샀습니까?
Look at the word order in the first
and in the second example.
When there is no action verb in a sentence
put the question word at the end of the sentence.
그 책은 어디 입니까?
And if there is a verb,
then the verb should become
the last word in the sentence.
그 책을 어디에서 샀습니까? Okay?
And how would you say,
'Where are you going?'
Here you also need to use a preposition.
Pause the video and try to figure out
how to say this question in Korean.
You can use this sentence as an example.
So, you can say either 어디에 or 어디로.
어디에 갑니까? or 어디로 갑니까?
Let’s take a look at one more example about
how you can use the question word 어디
with prepositions.
'How much have you done?'
Say, you are working on a task
and someone is asking you,
'How much work have you done until now?'
Think about how you can say it in Korean.
You can use the preposition ~까지.
어디까지 했습니까?
The next question word is When - 언제.
See if you can translate these
two sentences into Korean.
'When is your birthday?'
and 'When did you buy this?'
생일은 언제입니까?
and 이것을 언제 샀습니까?
The pronoun 'Your' and 'You' is
often omitted in the Korean language.
Most foreigners who learn Korean by themselves
think that the Korean word for ‘you’ is 당신.
which is actually true but
you cannot use it here and there.
Try to avoid using the word '당신'
until you become good enough in Korean because
I hope, by that time
you will have enough knowledge about Korean
and the Korean culture
to figure out
when it’s appropriate to use the pronoun 당신,
since 당신 can be used only in specific situations.
Otherwise you will sound very rude and unmannered.
Instead of ‘you’ or ‘your’
use the person’s title or
don’t use anything at all.
For example,
if you are talking to a teacher and
you are asking her:
“Did you buy this book?”,
the proper way to say it in Korean would be
선생님이 이 책을 샀습니까?
Not 당신이 이 책을 샀습니까, okay?
Let’s get back to our question word ‘언제’
How would you say
'Since when have you been learning Korean?'
The Korean preposition for ‘since’ is '부터', right?
So, 'since when' is 언제부터
한국어를 언제부터 공부합니까?
or 언제부터 한국어를 공부합니까?
and if you want to ask ‘until when?’
For example,
'Until when are you going to ignore me?'
언제까지 저를 무시하겠습니까?
or 저를 언제까지 무시하겠습니까?
The next question word is ‘Why?’
If you want you can pause the video and
try to translate these sentences for yourself.
Okay,
'Why me?' in Korean would be
제가 왜입니까?
'Why you did not come yesterday?'
Here we have the particle 'not'.
So, you need to use the grammatical construction
V/A + 지 않다
어제 왜 안 왔습니까?
or 왜 어제 안 왔습니까?
The next sentence is,
'Why do you learn Korean?'
한국어를 왜 공부합니까? or
왜 한국어를 공부합니까?
The next question word is
‘how much’ or ‘how many’?
In Korean there are two words you can use
to ask this question.
These words are 얼마 and 몇.
They are not interchangeable.
They are used in different situations.
Let’s take a look at what situations
you can use the question word 얼마.
You can use it to ask about a price.
'How much does that bag cost?'
저 가방은 얼마입니까?
You can also use 얼마 to ask about amount
of time left to finish something or
reach a destination.
'How long does it take from home to school?'
집에서 학교까지 얼마나 걸립니까?
~나 is a particle that has a few meanings.
We will cover it in the future lessons.
For now, just remember that
when you want to ask about
how much time is left or
how long does it take
you need to say
얼마나 걸립니까?, okay?
You can use 얼마나 for
emotional expressions such as
'How much I missed you!'
얼마나 보고 싶었는데요!
or 'It is sooo delicious!'
얼마나 맛있는데요!
And here are a few examples to show you
how to use the question word 몇.
It is mainly used with measure words such as
age, years, months, days , hours , minutes,
pieces and so on.
'How old are you?' is
몇 살입니까?
'What time is it now?' is
지금 몇 시입니까?
'How many days?' is
며칠입니까?
'며칠' is not a typo.
It’s an exception.
This is the correct way to write 며칠.
Not this (몇 일), okay?
'How many smartphones did you buy?'
스마트폰 몇 대 샀습니까?
대 is a measure word
used for devices and machines.
We will learn more about measure words
in the future lessons.
The next question word is ‘무엇’
which means ‘what’.
There are in fact, 4 different question words
in the Korean language
that in English are translated as ‘what’.
They are
무엇, 어느, 무슨, and 어떤.
Let’s learn about them in more detail.
You can use 무엇 to ask
‘What is this?’ 이것은 무엇입니까?
And if you attach a preposition ~으로
you will be able to make such questions as
'What did you use to draw this picture?'
이 그림을 무엇으로 그렸습니까?
'By what means?
did you draw this picture?'
You can also attach case markers
to this question word.
'What did you receive?'
무엇을 받았습니까?
So, in this type of question
use the question word '무엇'.
But what if you want to ask something like
'Where are you from?'
use the question word '어느'.
'어느' is used when you want to know
which one among or between more than one option.
There are over 200 countries in the world.
So, to ask ‘Where are you from?’ in Korean,
say 어느 나라 사람입니까?
which literally means
‘What country person are you?’
And if you are asking about some specific feature
use either '무슨' or '어떤'.
These two question words are different and used
depending on what you want to know.
'무슨' is less specific whereas
어떤 is used when you want to know
more specific information.
'What book are you looking for?'
무슨 책을 찾습니까?
'What kind of book are you looking for?'
어떤 책을 찾습니까?
or 'What kind of person do you like?'
어떤 사람을 좋아합니까?
Here we ask about personality,
specific traits of a person, okay?
Let’s take a look at the comparison table.
These 4 question words
in English can be translated
with the same word, ‘what’ .
And this is where the confusion comes from.
'무엇' and '어느' are the easiest to understand.
Usually '무슨' and '어떤' are often get confused.
So, unlike these 3 question words
'무엇' can be used with particles
with both, case markers: 무엇이, 무엇을
and prepositions: 무엇으로 and so on.
Whereas '어느', '무슨', and '어떤'
cannot be used with particles.
They are placed before a noun.
어느 책, 무슨 책, 어떤 책.
Now let’s compare these two question words
in more detail.
'무슨' and '어떤'.
'무슨' is used when you ask for not specific
or less specific information,
when the object or an event is unknown.
And if you want to ask about
features, content, state, or characteristics of an object,
use the question word '어떤'.
I agree, it might sound a little confusing
but the more you learn and see Korean texts,
soon you will be able to
distinguish one from the other
without much difficulty.
The next question word is '누구' or 'Who' in English.
Pause the video and see if you can figure out
how to ask these questions in Korean.
We put the question word 'Who' at the end.
So we should start with ‘that person’.
그 사람은 누구입니까?
And here, since we have an adjective ‘smart’
this adjective should be the last word
in the sentence because
in the Korean language
verbs and adjectives are placed
at the end of a sentence.
We should start with the question word '누가'.
누가 제일 똑똑합니까?
'Who', 'the most', 'smart'.
And this is not a typo.
This is how the question word ‘누구’
is need to be conjugated
in the Nominative case.
Many learners ask,
"What is the difference between 누구 and 누가?"
'누가' is a contracted form for '누구가'
where '누구' is the question word itself and
~가 is the Nominative case particle.
First thing you should remember is
you should never ever say '누구가' because
it would be wrong.
Instead say '누가'.
And the second thing you should pay attention to is
If you want to use the question word ‘who’
in the accusative case form
say '누구를'.
누구를 봤습니까?
'Who did you see?'
You cannot conjugate '누가' in the accusative case
because in this case
you are going to have the same word ‘누구’
in two different case forms:
in the Nominative case
and in the Accusative case
which is impossible and grammatically incorrect.
And to ask
‘Who did you give that book to?’
you need to attach the preposition ‘to’
which is ~한테 or ~에게
to the question word '누구'.
누구한테 or 누구에게
저 책을 누구한테 주었습니까?
And the last question word is ‘How?’
It has a few variants because in fact,
this question in the Korean language is an adjective.
And adjectives can be conjugated.
Look at these two sentences.
The difference between them is that
in the first example
there is no action verb or an adjective
whereas in the second example
we do have a verb ‘to learn’.
So,
when we have a verb or an adjective in a sentence
use '어떻게...?'
Otherwise use '어떻습니까' or '어때요'.
And the difference between '어떻습니까' and '어때요' is
the level of politeness
which we are going to learn in the next lesson.
'어떻습니까' is polite formal and '어때요' is
polite informal way to ask a question.
There was pretty much information today.
So, it’s totally fine
if you could not remember most of it.
You can watch the lesson again whenever you need.
And this is a list of words
we are gonna be using in the next lesson.