Bi weekly learning #6

[Sam Zhang]

This week, my language partner and I went through the present tense and some of the past tense. We also went through some examples and did some practice questions.

 

There are two rules for the present tense

 

1. When the last syllable of the stem ends in a consonant, you add ~는다 to the stem of the word
   1. 먹다 = 먹 + 는다 = 먹는다
   2. 닫다 = 닫는다
2. When the last syllable of the stem ends in a vowel, you add ~ㄴ to the last syllable followed by 다
   1. 배우다 = 배운다
   2. 이해하다 = 이해한다
   3. 가다= 간다

And these are the examples we went through

나는 친구를 (만나다) __만난다___________ 만나 + ㄴ= 만난 I am meeting a friend

나는 그것을 (이해하다) __이해한다____________ I am understanding

나는 한국어를 (배우다) __배운다________________ I am learning

나는 보스톤에 (가다) ___간다__________________ I am going

 

This is harder than I expected especially for the second rule. Because I have very limited Korean vocab and I am not familiar with the Korean pronunciation I am not sure if ㄴwas already part of the word or it is being added because it's tense. During the practice example, I always forgot to add ㄴ to the last syllable followed by 다

 

 

ㅏ ㅑ ㅓ ㅕ ㅗ ㅛ ㅜ ㅠ ㅡ ㅣ

There are a lot more rules for the past tense and the past tense is a lot more confusing

1. When the last vowel of the stem word is ㅗ or ㅏ, add 았다
   1. 닫다 à 닫았다 (닫 + 았다)
      1. 나는 문을 닫았다 I closed the door
   2. 가다 à 가았다 à 갔다 went

There is another rule in Korean if the letter ended with ㅏ we combined them with 았 because of ㅇis a silent consonant. The following examples show how to combine each of them.

 

2. When the last syllable of the stem word is 하, add ~였다
   1. 공부하다 à 공부하였다 (공부하 + 였다) studied
      1. 나는 한국어를 공부하였다 I studied Korean

 

3. When the last vowel of the stem word is anything other than ㅗ or ㅏ or 하, add 었다
   1. 먹다 à 먹었다 (먹 + 었다) ate

나는 밥을 먹었다 I ate

The tense is much harder than I expected, and we have only gone through half of them. I was expecting the tense to be similar to Japanese too, but in reality, the stem changes as the ending consonant and vowel changes which are really hard to memorize. In all the languages I have studied, I have never encounter grammar with these many rules in just present tense or past tense.

[Mallory Haskins]

Hi Sam!

I am with you in the struggle to learn conjugation and the tenses in Korean. After taking classes in Spanish, French, and German which are relatively easy to learn how to conjugate in, Korean was much harder than I had expected. I really like that you included the examples you completed with your language partner. While I continue trying to learn Korean I will hopefully be able to try and do the examples you posted here. It is interesting that conjugation is not very similar to Japanese as Japanese and Korean do share other grammatical elements. Although I have also definitely felt discouraged when trying to learn the tenses in Korean I believe in us and think we can do it. Keep up the good work and thanks for sharing, Sam!