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Lesson 1: Basic Korean Sentences

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The following videos are available to reinforce the concepts

in this lesson:
Sentence Practice (1), (2) | Dictation (1), (2) | Reading
Practice | Apply Yourself | Lesson Recap

Jump to:
Vocabulary
Greeting Words
Sentence Word Order
Korean Particles
To be:
That thing/This thing
This thing is a book

Click here for a free PDF of this lesson.

ANALYZING
KOREAN SIGNS

Vocabulary

The vocabulary is separated into nouns, verbs, adjectives

and adverbs for the purpose of simplicity.

Click on the English word to see information and examples

SENTENCE
of that word in use (you probably won’t be able to
PRACTICE
understand the grammar within the sentences at this point,
but it is good to see as you progress through your learning).

A PDF file neatly presenting these words and extra

information can be found here.

DICTATION
Want to give your brain practice at recognizing these
PRACTICE
:
 words? Try finding the words in this vocabulary list in a
Word Search.

Nouns:
PLAY = Korea 20 SECOND
LOOKS AT RAW
Common Usages: KOREA
= Korean person
= Korean language (For Korean people, Korean
language class is called “ ( )”)
= Korean person
= Korean history (in school, Korean history class is
usually called “ ( )”)
= Korean culture
= Korean economy
= the Korean War
= Korean stock market
= Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK)

Notes: The formal name of the country is

Examples
7 = I lived in Korea for seven
years
= I will go to Korea next year
= My mom will come to
Korea this year
= I learned Korean in Korea
= High school is difficult in Korea
= that house was built in Korea
= I live in Korea

PLAY = city

PLAY = name
:
 PLAY = I, me (formal)

PLAY = I, me (informal)

PLAY = man

PLAY = woman

PLAY = this

PLAY = that

PLAY = that (when something is far away)

PLAY = thing

PLAY = this (thing)

PLAY = that (thing)

PLAY = that (thing)

PLAY = chair

PLAY = table

PLAY = teacher

PLAY = bed

PLAY = house

PLAY = car

PLAY = person

PLAY = book
:
 PLAY = computer

PLAY = tree/wood

PLAY = sofa

PLAY = China

PLAY = Japan

PLAY = door

PLAY = doctor

PLAY = student

Adverbs and Other words:

PLAY = to be

PLAY = yes

PLAY = no

There are 1050 vocabulary entries in Unit 1. All entries are

linked to an audio file. You can download all of these files in
one package here.

For help memorizing these words, try using our Memrise

tool.

You might also want to try listening to all of the words on

loop with this Vocabulary Practice video.
:
 Greeting Words

Throughout my lessons, I will only use grammar and

vocabulary that you have learned from a previous lesson. In
Unit 0, I taught you how to write words in Korean. Above,
you can see the first set of words you should study to get
you started. I have not yet taught you how to use those
words or how conjugate them.

The words for “hello,” “thank you,” “how are you,” and
“please” are actually quite difficult in Korean. There is
actually grammar within the words themselves. At this
stage, I would simply memorize these “greeting words” as
one unit, and you can worry about the grammar within them
later when it becomes relevant. The words are:

PLAY = hello

and are the two words that are commonly

used to say “thank you.” However, they are rarely used in
those forms and are almost always conjugated. They can be
conjugated in a variety of ways, which will be introduced in
Lesson 5 and Lesson 6. The most common ways to
conjugate these words are:

PLAY
PLAY

PLAY
PLAY
PLAY

The way to say “how are you?” in Korean is:

PLAY ? = How are you?

Although this is the most literal way to ask “how are you?”
:
 in Korean, it is not as common as the English expression.
Korean people love food, and common way to greet
somebody is to ask them if they have eaten. The idea of
asking questions in Korean is taught in Lesson 21.

The way to say “please” in Korean is:

PLAY = Please

It is, of course, important for you to memorize these

expressions in Korean, but you need to know that there is a
reason why they are said that way. For now, don’t worry
about why they are said that way, and simply memorize
them. We will get back to them in later lessons when they
become important.

Sentence Word Order

Korean has a sentence structure that is hard to grasp

initially for English speakers. For our purposes in Lesson 1,
the words in Korean sentences are written in the following
order:

Subject – Object – Verb (for example: I hamburger eat)

Or
Subject – Adjective (for example: I beautiful)

I am going to quickly explain what a “subject” and “object”

mean, as your ability to understand later concepts depends
on your understanding of this.
The subject refers to person/thing/noun/whatever that is
:
 acting. The subject does the action of the verb. For
example, the subject in each sentence below is underlined:

I went to the park

I will go to the park
My mom loves me
He loves me
The dog ran fast
The clouds cleared up

In English, the subject always comes before the verb.

The object refers to whatever the verb is acting on. For

example, the object in each sentence below is underlined

My mom loves me
The dog bit the mailman
He ate rice
Students studied Korean

In English, the object always comes after the verb. However,

a sentence with a verb does not require an object. For
example:

I slept
I ate
He died

Sometimes there is no object because it has simply been

omitted from the sentence. For example, “I ate” or “I ate
rice” are both correct sentences. Other verbs, by their
nature, cannot act on an object. For example, you cannot
place an object after the verbs “to sleep” or “to go:”

I sleep you
I go you
:
 Subjects are also present in sentences with adjectives.
However, there is no object in a sentence with an adjective.
The subjects are underlined in the following adjective-
sentences below:

School is boring
I am boring
The movie was funny
The building is big
My girlfriend is pretty
The food is delicious

Verbs and adjectives are placed at the end of a sentence.

Actually, every Korean sentence and clause must end in one
of the following:

– A verb
– An adjective, or
–

I talk about the meaning of later in this lesson. It is

neither a verb nor an adjective, but it behaves like them.
Every verb, every adjective and end in “ ,” and these
are the only words in Korean that can be conjugated.

Korean also has a formality system built into the language.

That is, the way one speaks to an older person who
deserves high respect would be different than the way one
speaks to a friend. There are many ways words in a
sentence can change depending on the formality of the
situation, but the two most common, basic and important
things to be aware of are:

1) There are two ways to say “I” or “me” in Korean:

, used in informal situations, and

:
 , used in formal situations.

2) There are many ways to conjugate a word. As we saw

above, the word can be conjugated many different
ways. It is important to know which conjugation to use in
which situation. This is taught in Lesson 6. Until Lesson 6, I
make no distinction of formality and the focus is more on
sentence structure than conjugations. Until then, you will
see both and arbitrarily used. Don’t worry about why
one is used over the other until Lesson 6, when formalities
will be explained.

Okay, now that you know all of that, we can talk about
making Korean sentences.

Korean Particles (~ / and ~ / )

Most words in a Korean sentence have a particle (a fancy

word to say ‘something’) attached to them. These particles
indicate the role of each word in a sentence – that is,
specifically which word is the subject or object. Note that
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 there is absolutely no way of translating these particles to
English, as we do not use anything like them.
The following are the particles you should know for this
lesson:

or (Subject)
This is placed after a word to indicate that it is the subject
of a sentence.
Use when the last letter of the last syllable of the subject
is a vowel. For example:
=
=

Use when the last letter of the last syllable of the subject
is a consonant. For example:
=
=

or (Object)
This is placed after a word to indicate that is the object of a
sentence.
Use when the last letter of the last syllable is a vowel. For
example:
=
=

Use when the last letter of the last syllable is a consonant.

For example:
=
=

We can now make sentences using the Korean sentence

structure and the Korean particles.

1) I speak Korean = I Korean speak

is attached to “I” (the subject)
:
 is attached to “Korean” (the object)

2) I like you = I you like

is attached to “I” (the subject)
is attached to “you” (the object)

3) I wrote a letter = I letter wrote

is attached to “I” (the subject)
is attached to “letter” (the object)

4) I opened the door = I door opened

is attached to “I” (the subject)
is attached to “the door” (the object)

5) My mom will make pasta = My mom pasta will make

is attached to “my mom” (the subject)
is attached to “pasta” (the object)

The same could be done for sentences with adjectives.

However, remember that sentences with adjectives will not
have an object:

1) My girlfriend is pretty: My girlfriend is pretty

“ ” is attached to “my girlfriend” (the subject)

2) The movie was scary = The movie was scary

“ ” is attached to “the movie” (the subject)

We will now switch our focus to using actual Korean words

to create sentences ending in .

To be:
:
 Let’s start building sentences in Korean. In this lesson, we
will start by making simple sentences using the word .
The translation for “ ” is “to be.” English speakers often
don’t realize how difficult the word “to be” is. Depending on
who is being referred to, the word “to be” could be any of
the underlined words below:

I am a man
He is a man
They are men
I was a man
They were men

In each of those sentences, a different word (is, am, are,

was, were) is used depending on the subject and tense of
the sentence. I can’t imagine how difficult this would be for
an English learner. In Korean, the is used to represent
all of those “to be” words.

As mentioned earlier, can be conjugated. In that way,

is similar to verbs and adjectives, but the rules for
are often (but not always) different. I will teach you how
differs from verbs and adjectives as it becomes important in
later lessons. For example, in Lesson 52 you will learn that
the process for quoting a sentence with is different
than with verbs and adjectives.

Like adjectives, can not act on an object. Only verbs

can act on objects. For example:

I eat hamburgers (eat is a verb, the object is a hamburger)

She meets my friend (meet is a verb, the object is my
friend)
They study Korean (study is a verb, the object is Korean)
We listen to music (listen is a verb, the object is music)
:
 All of those sentences (can) have objects because the verb
is the predicate of the sentence. However, in sentences that
are predicated by adjectives, there will not be an object

I am pretty
She is beautiful
They are hungry
We are smart

Look at those four sentences. When we use adjectives in

English, we must also use “to be” words like am, is and are.
In other words, we cannot make sentences like this:

I pretty
She beautiful
They hungry
We smart

Unlike in English, is not used in these types of

sentences. That is, we do not use to indicate that
something “is” an adjective. The structure of sentences
predicated by adjectives is discussed in Lesson 3.

So, is not used in these types of sentences:

I am pretty
She is beautiful
They are hungry
We are smart

However, is used in these types of sentences:

I am a man
He is a man
They are men
I was a man
They were men
:
 is used to indicate that a noun is a noun. The basic
structure for a sentence predicated by “ ” is:

[noun / ] [another noun][ ]

For example:
I man = I am a man

Now substitute the words for “man” and “I,” which are:

=I
= man

The Korean sentence would look like this:

= I am a man

Notice that is attached directly to the second noun.

Verbs and adjectives are not attached to nouns like this, but
is. It would be incorrect to include a space between the
second noun and . For example, this would be incorrect:

Although it might look and feel like “ ” is an object in that

sentence, it is not. , like adjectives and unlike verbs
cannot act on an object. It would be incorrect to include the
object particle on the second noun. For example, this would
be incorrect:

The focus of this lesson (and Lessons 2, 3 and 4) is to

introduce you to simple Korean sentence structure. Until
you reach Lessons 5 and Lesson 6 you will not be exposed
to the conjugations and honorifics of Korean verbs,
adjectives and . These words are very rarely used
:
 without conjugations and honorifics.

The conjugation of sentences is very important, but so is

the structure of sentences. When creating these lessons, I
went back in forth many times thinking about which one I
should present first. You can’t conjugate sentences if you
don’t have a logical sentence to conjugate; and you can’t
create a logical sentence if you don’t know how to
conjugate it. In the end, I figured it would make more sense
to present the information this way – where learners are
introduced to sentence structure and then learn how to
conjugate the words within the sentence.

Throughout all of my lessons, I use example sentences to

show how grammar can be used. The example sentences in
Lessons 1 – 4 are not conjugated. However, directly
beneath each non-conjugated sentence is a conjugated
version of the same sentence in parenthesis (one formal
and one informal conjugation). You might want to glimpse at
how the words are conjugated, but remember that this will
be taught in Lessons 5 and 6 (for verbs and adjectives) and
Lesson 9 (for ).

Other examples of in use:

= I am a woman
( PLAY / )

= I am a teacher
( PLAY / )

= I am a person
( PLAY / )

______ = I am a _______
:
 ( _______ / _____ )

You can substitute any noun into the blank space to make
these sentences.

The words “this” and “that” are often used as the subject of
these types of sentences. Let’s now look at how we can
apply , and to sentences with .

This and That ( / / )

You can see in the vocabulary above that the word for “this”
is in Korean.
We use in Korean when we are talking about something
that is within touching distance (For example: this pen – i.e.
the one I am holding). Just like in English “ ” (this) is
placed before the noun it is describing. For example:

= This person
= This man
= This woman
= This car
= This table
= This chair

Unfortunately, there are two words for “that”: and .

Early learners of Korean are always confused with the
difference between “ ” and “ .”
:
 We use when we are talking about something from a
previous sentence or from previous context, regardless of if
you could see it or not. Providing examples would be too
difficult right now because you do not know any Korean
sentences. However, if I were to say: “I don’t like that man
[when your friend mentioned him in a previous sentence].”
The word “that” in that sentence would be how “ ” is used.

We use when we are talking about something that we can

see, but cannot touch because it is too far away.

We can place “ ” or “ ” before a noun to describe “this” or

“that” thing just like we did with “ .”

= This person
= That person
= That person

= This man
= That man
= That man

= This woman
= That woman
= That woman

= This chair
= That chair
= That chair

= This table
= That table
= That table

Again, although the English translations of “ ” and “ ” are

the same, it is important to remember that they are not the
same word in Korean.
:
 One of the most common words in Korean is “ ” meaning
“thing.” When , or are placed before “ ,” the result is
a compound word. Therefore, when placing “ ” after ,
or , there should not be a space between the two. In other
words, the following are words in and within themselves,
and not two separate words:

= this thing
= that thing
= that thing

We see this same phenomenon happen with other common

words that you learn in future lessons. You don’t need to
worry about this now, but we see this same thing happen
with the word (meaning “place”) and (meaning
“time”).

With these words, the word “thing” isn’t necessary in the

English translation. Let me explain.

I’ll use “that” as an example, but the same idea can be

applied to the word “this.”

“That” can be placed before a noun to describe it. As we

saw earlier:

That person
That man
That woman

However, it can also be a noun itself. For example:

I like that

In this type of English sentence, “that” is referring to some

thing that you like. It is a noun. It is a thing.
:
 Therefore, the sentence could just as easily be said as:

I like that thing

I don’t like to use grammatical jargon in my lessons, but if

you know what these words mean, it could be helpful. In
both English and Korean, “that” can be a determiner (as in,
“I like that man”), and it can also be a pronoun (as in “I like
that”). When used as a determiner in Korean, you should
place before a noun. When used as a pronoun in Korean,
the word is used.

In this same respect, while “ , and ” translate to “this,

that and that” respectively, and are placed before nouns to
indicate “this noun, that noun and that noun,” “ , and
” are nouns (they are pronouns). Therefore, they do not
need to be followed by the redundant word “thing,”
although their meanings would be exactly the same:

I like this
I like this thing

I like that
I like that thing

We can now use these nouns as subjects or objects in a

sentence. We will look at how they can be used with “ ”
next.

Using This/That with

Remember, translates to “to be” and is conjugated as

“am/is/are” in English. Now that we know how to use ,
and (and , and ), we can now make
sentences like this:
:
 That person is a doctor

We can start by putting those words into the Korean

structure:

That person doctor is

And then changing the English words to the appropriate

Korean words:

+ +

PLAY ( / )

More examples:
= That person is a teacher
( PLAY / )

= This (thing) is a table

( PLAY / )

= That (thing) is a bed

( PLAY / )

= That person is a man

( PLAY / )

= That person is a woman

( PLAY / )

= That (thing) is a car

( PLAY / )

= This (thing) is a tree

( PLAY / )

There are 1250 example sentences in Unit 1. All entries are

:
 linked to an audio file. You can download all of these files in
one package here.

Wow! That was an extremely difficult lesson. If you were to

pick up another Korean text book, I am sure the first chapter
would be much easier than this. Trust me though; learning
this at the start will be very useful to you later on. When I
was learning how to speak Korean, it took me months to
realize some of these things (not because they were hard,
but because I was using a text book that never taught me
the reason why things are the way they are in Korean).

Before you move on, make sure you understand the simple
Korean sentence structure presented in this first lesson.
Also, remember that the sentences not in parentheses are
technically incorrect (or very very uncommon) because
they have not been conjugated.

Okay, I got it! Take me to the next lesson! Or,

Click here for a workbook to go along with this lesson.

Want to try to
create some
sentences
using the
vocabulary and
grammar from
this lesson?

This YouTube video will prompt you to translate English

sentences into Korean using the concepts from this lesson.

Round 1 | Round 2
:
 Want to
practice your
listening skills?

This YouTube
video will
prompt you
with Korean sentences to dictate using the concepts from
this lesson.

Round 1 | Round 2

Want to
practice
reading some
sentences?

These YouTube
videos will
prompt you with some written Korean sentences, and you
can try to figure out the meaning of the sentences!

Want to apply
what you
learned in this
lesson?

This YouTube
video will
prompt you with English sentences using the grammar from
this lesson, but vocabulary you haven’t been exposed to
yet!
:
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