Korean and English have completely different grammar structures, which can make getting to know Korean tricky for native English speakers. Exactly how should you overcome this challenge? The most effective way is to tackle the issue head on, by directly comparing Korean and English sentence structures. This text will offer a very brief review of basic grammar concepts and then explain the three primary grammatical variations between Korean and English.

Fast and simple Grammar Refresher

To get the most from this write-up, you need to understand some important grammatical concepts. Most importantly, you need to understand objects, verbs and subjects. Simply put, a verb is a word that expresses action or being, words such as walk, eat, and tell. The subject of a sentence, in contrast, is the word that takes the action of the verb. Finally, the object in a sentence is the \”thing\” involved in the action. It frequently answers the \”who,\” \”when,\” or \”where\” kinds of questions.

For example, in the phrase \”Ryan wrote a letter,\” the verb is \”wrote.\” Ryan is the person who did the writing, so he\’s the subject, and the letter is what Ryan wrote, so it\’s the object. Do you notice the order in which those words were put?

Comparing English and Korean Word Order

The order of the words in the sentence above is subject + verb + object. In Korean, the order of the terms in a sentence is subject + object + verb. So, in this case, applying Korean sentence structure, the sentence would read like this:

\”Ryan letter wrote.\” Or, in Romanized Korean, laieon eun pyeonji leul sseoss-eoyo.

Laieon = Ryan (there is no \”R\” sound in Korean)

pyeonji = letter

sseoss-eoyo = write

This is the most significant part of Korean grammar that you have to comprehend. You will need to fight all of your natural instincts, but you have to put the verb at the end of the sentence when speaking Korean.

Subject and Object markers

This is an uncomplicated comparison. In The english language, there are no subject and object markers. In Korean, there are. Look at the example sentence I wrote above. Did you see that there are 5 terms in the Korean sentence but that I only translated three of them? The two terms I didn\’t translate are \”eun\” and \”leul.\” I did not translate them because there\’s no direct translation.

Observe that the term \”eun\” follows the word \”Laieon\” (Ryan). Laieon is the subject of the sentence; therefore, it is marked with the subject marker \”eun.\”

The word \”pyeonji\” (letter), in contrast, is the object, so it\’s marked with the object marker \”leul.\” These markers can be puzzling at first, but don\’t worry. They come naturally after you begin to use them routinely.

The Lack of Articles in the Korean Language

Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of nouns. In The english language they\’re the words \”a/an\” and \”the.\” Check out example sentence above one more time. You may have thought that I made a typo when I wrote the sentence, \”Ryan letter wrote?\” In reality, however, the sentence is proper when penned in the Korean form because in the Korean language there is absolutely no use of articles at all.

Summary

Korean and English have very different grammar structures, which can make figuring out Korean somewhat challenging for native English speakers. You can make the task less difficult, however, if you comprehend the difference in word order, the difference in the use of subject and object markers, and the difference in the use of articles.

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Category: Education
Keywords: learn Korean, Korean language, study Korean, how to study korean,Korean grammar