Korean words, like those of every other language, fall into several different kinds or classes; the words are classified according to the way they are used in sentences.
Korean VERBS (the words at the end of nearly every Basic Sentence in this lesson) are INFLECTED WORDS: they consist of a basic part, the BASE, to which various ENDINGS are attached in order to make them mean different things.
For example, we have already had the following three sentences:
- 실례합니다.[silyle[h]amnida]
Excuse me (for what I am doing).
실례했습니다.[silyle[h]æssumnida]
Excuse me (for what I did).
실례하겠습니다.[silyle[h]agessumnida]
Excuse me (for what I’m about to do).
The verb in each case is the same – here, it means do – and its basic part is 하- [= ha-]. Only the endings are different, and it is these that give the changes in meaning.
Here are a few sentences of another type (you are not meant to learn those you haven’t seen, just look at them):
- 용서하세요[yogsuhhaseyo]
Please forgive me. - 안녕히 가세요[annyuhng[h]i gase yo]
Good-bye [= Go in peace] - 안녕히 계세요[annyuhng[h]i gese yo]
Good-bye [= Stay in peace] - 책을 보세요[chægul bose yo]
Please look at your books
These sentences all have different verbs, but the verbs all end the same way: -세요 [= -seyo]. This ending (a combination of suffixes) makes each verb express a polite request.
Korean NOUNS, on the other hand, are not inflected; they can be used with no endings attached to them. Instead, PARTICLES are optionally added to show the relationship between the noun and the rest of the sentence, much as prepositions are used in English. The great majority of Korean nouns correspond to English words which are also nouns – 책 [= chæk] book, 질문 [= chilmun] question, 영어 [= yuhnguh] English, etc. This is not always the case, however!
As a vocabulary item, 첵 [= chæk] means book. In sentences, however, we translate it variously: book, a book, the book, some books, any books, the books, books. This is another way of saying that Korean has no words corresponding to a(n), the, some, any, and that Korean nouns may have a plural meaning without any explicit sign that they are plural. To be sure, it is possible to make Korean nouns unambiguously plural, as we will learn later; but it is not imperative to do so as it is with most English nouns. In English, book, for example, is specifically singular, whereas books is specifically plural, and this applies every time they are used.