Last week, I learned three new grammar rules with Brenda. They were “-으니까/니까”, “-지마”, and “-을지/ㄹ지”.
As what I mentioned in my first journal, the plan for this semester would be more focus on my conversational skills. So Brenda and I spent more time on making up sentences using these three verb endings and tried to have conversations using those sentences. The class last week, I think, gave us a good start of making our class more conversational rather than simply learning those grammatical rules. Although we just focused on learning new rules, we would explore more interesting activities later this semester. Moreover, in this journal I want to include more about the first verb ending we learned.
The first verb ending, -(으)니까, is used when the verb before -(으)니까 is the reason for another action or the basis of a judgement. This verb ending reminded me of another verb ending I have learned before. It was “-아/어/여서”. It is also used to link sentences and show a reason/result relationship between them. To be able to distinguish these two similar verb endings and use them accurately in different conditions, I researched the difference between these two verb endings after class. Firstly, although both of these structures show the reason/result, or cause/effect relationship, of two verbs, -아/어/여서 cannot be used in imperative sentences or with “Let’s”. For example, “지금바쁘니까나중에전화해주세요. (I am busy now, so call me later.)” is the right expression. But we cannot say “지금바빠서나중에전화해주세요.” Secondly, for basic greetings and when talking about your own feelings or situations, you cannot use -(으)니까. -아/어/여서 must be used in this situation. For instance, “와줘서고마워요. (Thank you for coming.)”, which expresses our thanks to others, we should use “와줘서” instead of “와주니까”.
Learning these differences enables me to judge which grammar should be used more accurately in daily communications and helps me to understand the meanings and context in readings.
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