To Study (공부하다)
Posted by Maureen on February 11, 2008
For those of you who are podcasters, here is the URL for our grammar lesson: http://www.5stardreams.com/to-study/
Today we are going to expand on our verbs by learning a new one, to study (공부하다). Hopefully, by the end of the week, we will be able to expand on a bunch of our vocabulary by making complete sentenances. You’ll be able to have a conversation in Korean!
Let’s take a look at the verb stem.
You write this in Korean: 공부
How about saying, “I study” (공부 합니다)? Now can you say “Do you study?” (공부 합니까?)
A little bit about Verbs
So far, we have only learned the very formal way of speaking, and for the time being, we will continue with this as to not confuse everyone. We will, at some point, learn less formal ways of speaking.
If you haven’t already figured it out, you can drop the dictionary verb ending (다) to form verbs. So far, we can say conjugate them with “I” and “You.” You take the verb stem, in this case 공부하 and add the conjugated verb ending.
To figure out which ending to use, we must determine whether or not the verb stem ends with a vowel or a consonant.
If it ends with a vowel, we add ㅂ니다 to the end. So, in this case it is 공부하 + ㅂ 니다 which equals 공부합니다. Let’s try the question. The verb ending, if it is a vowel, is ㅂ니까? So, in this case it is 공부하 + ㅂ 니까 which equals 공부합니까.
What happens if it ends in a consonant? Then the verb endings would be 습니다 and 습니까?
Can you conjugate the following verbs?
먹다 (to eat)
and
가다 (to go)
-
먹다 (to eat) would be: 먹 - 다 + 습니다 or 습니까?
먹습니다 (I eat) or 먹습니까? (You eat?)
가다 (to go) would be: 가 - 다 + ㅂ니다 or ㅂ니까?
갑니다 (I eat) or 잡니까? (You eat?)
Homework
Ok! So now that you know how to conjugate verbs, can you look up some in the dictionary and write them out? Your homework is that you must look up three verbs! Have fun!
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Tomorrow I’m going to write a new article about using flash cards for studying.
