Vowels (10)

Korean has a ten-vowel symmetrical system composed

by five front and five back vowels:
 Nominal. Nouns, adjectives and pronouns are not
inflected.

 Gender: is not marked.

 Syllable structure. Korean syllables have a CV

structure. Thus, clusters at the beginning of a
syllable are not allowed. The possible final
consonants are p, t, k, m, n, ng, or l.

 Number: plurality of nouns can be marked by -tɨl

or by a numeral. When a numeral is present, a
noun classifier is attached to the numeral and a
plural marker is not required.
 Singular Plural
 Saram (a person) - saramtɨl(people)

 Koyaŋi (cat) koyaŋi tɨl(cats)

Classifiers: The numeral + classifier is placed most
frequently after the noun but it can also precede it. In
the latter case the genitive particle ŭi is inserted
between the numeral + classifier and the noun.
For example, "two bottles of beer"

 1) maekcu tu-pyŏng maekcu: beer (noun); tu: two

(numeral); pyŏng: bottle (classifier)

 2) tu-pyŏng ŭi maekcu ŭi: of (genitive particle)

 Generally articles specify the grammatical
definiteness of the noun. Examples are "the,
a, and an". Here are some examples:

the book 그 책 - geu chaek

the books책들 - chaek deul
the lemon 그 레몬 - geu remon
the lemons 레몬들 - remon deul
 Each sentence ender must include several
suffixes in a fixed order: tense, addressee
honorific, mood, and sentence-type.

e.g. May/might your father have caught it?

= taŋsinɨj apΛʧika kɨkΛtɨl ʧap-ɨsi-Λt-ket-sɨp-n

ika?
☞ The verb is analyzed on the basis of morpheme like the
following:
 ʧap(=catch) = root
 ɨsi = polite expression to your father(the subject honor)
 Λt = the affix showing the past
 ket = the affix showing presumption / conjecture
 sɨp = polite expression to the listener/the partner(addressee
honor)
 nika = the question(interrogative) affix
 personalpronouns (refer to the persons
speaking, the persons spoken to, or the
persons or things spoken about), indefinite
pronouns, relative pronouns (connect parts of
sentences) and reciprocal or reflexive
pronouns (in which the object of a verb is
being acted on by verb's subject).
English Pronouns Korean Pronouns
Pronouns 대명사 - dae myeong sa
I 나는/내가 - na neun nae ga
you 너는/당신이 - neo neun dang sin i
he 그는/그가 - geu neun geu ga
she 그녀는/그녀가 - geu nyeo neun geu nyeo ga
we 우리는/우리가 - u ri neun u ri ga
they 그들은/그들이 - geu deur eun geu deur i

me 나를 - na reul
you 너를/당신을 - neo reur dang sin eul
him 그를 - geu reul
her 그녀를 - geu nyeo reul
us 우리를 - u ri reul
them 그들을 - geu deur eul

my 나의 - na ui
your 너의/당신의 - neo ui dang sin ui
his 그의 - geu ui
her 그녀의 - geu nyeo ui
our 우리의 - u ri ui
their 그들의 - geu deur ui

mine 나의 것/내것 - na ui geos nae geot

yours 너의 것/당신의 것 - neo ui geos dang sin ui geot
his 그의 것 - geu ui geot
hers 그녀의 것 - geu nyeo ui geot
ours 우리의 것 - u ri ui geot
theirs 그들의 것 - geu deur ui geot
Korean sentence structure is incredibly different from
English sentence structure:

 Basic Korean sentence structure is Subject – Object –

Verb
 As sentences become more complex, a basic rule of
thumb for Korean sentence structure is “after the
subject, the word order is opposite to that of English.”
In Korean, particles function in the same way, except
that there are particles for words that don’t exist in
English.

 While prepositions are separate words that come before

the word they modify, particles attach to the end of the
word they modify.
 Topic is the general object of the sentence, which many
times is the subject. Many times this can be translated
as “as for”

 In the sentence, “as for Elephants, their noses are long,”

Elephants is the topic, even though “their noses” is the
subject.
 Normally, if the topic is the same as the subject, the
subject is omitted:

“재손은 재손이 한국 사람이에요”

(Jaeson-eun jaeson-i hangook saram ieyo)
“(As for) Jason, he is a Korean”