The Korean sentences of this lesson end with VERBS of various kinds. Notice that the verbs you have learned, including 있어요 is, exists, 없어요 isn’t, doesn’t exist, and the copula -(이)에요 is, end with 요, and that before this 요 there is a vowel sound. Verbs that end this way are in the POLITE STYLE (= 해요) of speech. As you have seen earlier, the social relationship between two speakers determines what style they use when speaking to each other, i.e., what endings they will use with the verbs at the end of their sentences. If they are educated people who respect each other and yet do not feel stiff or formal together, they are apt to use the Polite Style most of the time. The Polite Style ending is the same regardless of whether it is used with a verb which asks a question or one which makes a statement: it is usually the speaker’s tone of voice, rather than the actual syllables he utters, that indicate this sort of meaning, in the same way that you can turn such a sentence as You’re not going into either a question or an announcement. Verbs in the polite style can make suggestions (Let’s. . .) or even gentle commands (Why don’t you. . . or How about VERBing?) all with the same verb form, ending in a vowel sound plus 요. Korean verb forms are made up of BASES with ENDINGS on them. The present-tense forms you have seen so far are all in the POLITE STYLE and have the particle 요 at the end to mark the style. If you remove this 요,the part that remains is what we call the INFINITIVE of the verb (the term has nothing to do with the notion of ‘infinitive’ in European languages). The Korean infinitive has a great many uses of its own, and in addition it is what the PAST TENSE is based on (we will look at this in the next lesson). Here is a list of common verbs in the infinitive form (you need to learn these as part of the vocabulary for this lesson):
| 앉아 | sits | 찾아 | looks for; find |
| 자 | goes to bed; sleeps | 좋아 | is good |
| 작아 | is little in size | 줘 < 주어 | gives |
| 적어 | are few in number | 없어 | is nonexistent |
| 해 | does [IRREGULAR] | 일어나 | gets up |
| 빨라 | is fast | 읽어 | reads |
| 받아 | receives, gets | 있어 | exists; stays; has |
| 배워 | learns | 와 | comes |
| 가 | goes | 피워 | smokes |
| 가르쳐 | teaches | 서 | stands |
| 놀아 | plays | 봐 < 보아 | looks at, sees |
| 커 | is large, big | 사 | buys |
| 기다려 | waits (for) | 살아 | lives |
| 끝나 | stops, ends, is over | 써 | writes |
| 많아 | is much; are many | 쉬어 | rests |
| 만나 | meets/sees (s.b.) | 닫아 | closes it |
| 마셔 | drinks | 들어 | hears; listens to |
| 먹어 | eats | 열어 | opens it |
| 돼 (= 되어) | becomes | 다녀 | attends, goes regularly |
| 물어 | bites | 물어 | asks |
If you glance down the list, you will see that all of the infinitives end in a vowel, 어 or 아 (해 does is irregular.) The vowel at the end is in some cases an ENDING (to mark the infinitive), while in others it belongs to the basic part of the verb (its BASE) and the infinitive vowel 어/아 has been dropped or abbreviated. You may wonder why we translate the infinitives by English forms like does it instead of to do; it is because the Korean forms can be used as sentences just as they stand: when you remove the polite-style particle 요 you have sentences in the INTIMATE style, about which we will learn more later.