Recently, my language partner and I have been focusing on endings that express emotion in phrases such as surprise or realization. The two that we chose are very similar but have nuanced differences. Adding ‘네요’ after a verb stem expresses surprise or admiration while adding ‘구나, 군 or 군요’ after a verb stem expresses realization of new information. The endings are differentiated by levels of 'self-speech'. The ‘군요’ ending implies that the person speaking is talking to themselves or directing the speech at the situation instead of the other person. These phrases do not prompt a response as much as those that end in '네요’. While phrases with this ending are still considered self-speech, they more directed at another person, making it more likely to get a response.
For example, let’s say your friend tells you they go to sleep at 9 pm every night. One response to that would be ‘아,일찍 자는구나’ - ‘ah, you sleep early’ as you are realizing this new information. Another response would be ‘와! 일찍 자네요!’ - ‘wow! You sleep early!’ which might prompt a confirming response like ‘네, 그래요’ – ‘yes, that’s right’. What’s helpful about learning the meaning presented by these endings is that the emotion in the nuanced phrases is easily translated into English, making it easier to understand the implications and differences. My homework is to write a couple of example sentences for each ending to practice getting the feel for the phrases and the situations that would warrant them.
This week, I furthered my learning of Korean phrases by completing two lessons by Talk To Me In Korean that covered the difference between the particles ‘에’ and ‘에서’ and the different ways to use the word ‘언제’ - ‘when’. Although I’ve had a general idea about the grammar presented in the lessons, there were some nuances that I hadn’t picked up on before. There were also several useful examples of common phrases using ‘에’, ‘에서’, and ‘언제’ that I can see myself using in daily conversation. Many of the phrases incorporate the past tense, and I realized I don’t have that much practice using it in daily phrases. I’ve made it a point to review the past tense recently, so I was able to understand the example phrases quite well. Some basic ones include ‘I went to school’ – ‘학교에 갔어요‘ and ‘When did you arrive?’ – ‘언제 도착했어요?’. The lessons also provided some vocabulary to practice using in the phrases to get a better feel of the structure. I find this resource very useful and I will utilize it in the future.
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