안녕하세요 여러분,
Hello dear learners! This is the second of a two parts series (You have waited too long!). We are going to talk about Korean adjectives again today. If you missed the first part, go to <Korean Adjectives - 1>
♣ ‘Adjective’ in English, ‘Descriptive Verb’ in Korean
In <Korean Adjective -1>, we started with the two English sentences below.
(1) This hat is pretty.
(2) I bought a pretty hat.
And we learned (1), which explains why Korean adjective is called ‘Descriptive Verb’. Because it is treated like a verb! What does it mean? It means, instead of having two separate words, for example, in this case ‘is’ and ‘pretty’, in Korean, ‘is + pretty’ is manifested as one chunk like a verb. Okay, enough recap.
Now, let’s look at the sentence (2). The basic concept is “simpler” because it is similar to English.
♣ So … what do we do?
First, look through these descriptive verbs or “adjectives” in infinitive forms.
▶ 작다: to be small
▶ 예쁘다: to be pretty
▶ 크다: to be big
▶ 싸다: to be cheap
▶ 비싸다: to be expensive
▶ 행복하다: to be happy
▶ 좋다 : to be good/nice
▶ 덥다 : to be hotWhat we have to do is change the form of these infinitives, so we know they will be located on the left side of the noun, just like English (ex: pretty hat). There are some irregular conjugations but the main principle is the following:
1) Remove the final ‘다’.
2) Add either ‘ㄴ’ if the last syllable doesn’t have 받침, or ‘은’ if it has 받침.
Here is how it’s done:
▶ 작다 → 작은
▶ 예쁘다 → 예쁜
▶ 크다 → 큰
▶ 싸다 → 싼
▶ 비싸다 → 비싼
▶ 행복하다 → 행복한
▶ 좋다 → 좋은
▶ 덥다 → 더운(*irregular)♣ Let’s try it out!
Once you get used to changing from infinitive to adjective form like it is explained above, making sentences is quite straightforward and easy.
Try these and see you if got them right!
‘I bought a pretty hat.’
‘good friend’
‘I saw expensive clothes.’
‘small room’
‘happy person’
◑Answers:
▶ I bought a pretty hat. → 예쁜 모자를 샀어요.
▶ good friend → 좋은 친구
▶ I saw expensive clothes. → 비싼 옷을 봤어요.
▶ small room → 작은 방
▶ happy person → 행복한 사람Do you have any questions about Korean adjectives? Please let us know!