Korean Adjectives

WATCH THE LESSON: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8i8ZlYpDIg&t=9s
Today we’re gonna learn about Korean adjectives. An adjective is a descriptive word. It is a word that describes a noun. You probably already know that.

Adjectives are quite a bit different in Korean. They’re, actually, more like verbs.

You see in English we use adjective like this:

"Chocolate is good."

In English you have to say “is good”,

But in Korean you don’t need the “is”

You can just say:
초콜릿 좋아.

chocolate joh-a.

좋아 joh-a is the Korean word for good, and it has the “is” built right into it.

You can think of 좋아 joh-a as meaning “is good”.

As we learned in past videos Korean doesn’t change the verb depending on whether they are using first, second, or third person. They don’t change adjectives either. So not only does 좋아 mean “is good” it also means “are good” and “am good”.

You could say that adjectives in Korean are not just adjectives. They all have verbs built into them.

And because of that, they are conjugated like verbs. We could call them Descriptive Verbs. And just like verbs they have casual, polite, and formal present tenses. If you’ve been watching the videos on my channel in order you will already know all about verbs and how to conjugate them. We are now going to do the same thing with adjectives.

Let’s take a look at the infinitive form of our example: 좋다“Joh-da”
좋다

Joh-da

To be good

It means “to be good”. Not just “good”. It has the verb “to be” in it too. So, we treat it like a verb. If we want to say something is good we need to conjugate it into the present tense. This video is going to serve as a sort of review for the first three Korean Present Tense Conjugation videos. I recommend that you watch those first if you haven’t already, cuz this lesson is gonna go through them really fast. A playlist is linked here  

So let’s start conjugating:

Step 1) cut off the -da 다

Step 2) look at what is now the last syllable. If the last syllable is 하ha we have a 하다ha-da verb, if the last syllable contains ㅗ(o) or ㅏ(a) but is not 하(ha) we have an ㅏ(a) verb, or if the last syllable contains any vowel other than ㅗ(o) or ㅏ(a) we have an ㅓ(eo) verb.

In this example the new last syllable contains ㅗ(o). So it is an ㅏ(a) verb.

Once we’ve identified our verb type we can follow the rules for conjugating that type of verb.

좋아, 좋아요, 좋습니다
joh-a, joh-a-yo, joh-seum-ni-da.

Let’s summarize those rules really quick! ALL of them!

First of all lets talk about the Formal form. Some of you may have already noticed this but regardless of whether you have an ㅓ(eo)verb, ㅏ(a)verb, or 하다(ha-da) verb the Formal is made the exact same way.:

And that is by adding ㅂ니다m-ni-da to verb roots that end in vowels and adding 습니다 seum-ni-da to verb roots that end in consonants.

Next, let’s talk about the polite form. The polite form is also the same for ㅓ(eo) verbs, ㅏ(a) verbs, and 하다(ha-da) verbs. You make it by adding 요(yo) to the casual form.

The hard part is making the casual form.

So let’s talk about that.

If you have a 하다(ha-da) verb:

The root of a ha-da verb ends in 하(ha). To conjugate it to the present tense turn it into 해(hae). There’s your casual present tense.

If you have an ㅏ(a) verb:

And the root ends in a consonant add ㅏ(a) to make your casual present tense.

If the root ends in an ㅏ(a) you don’t need to add anything.

If the root ends in an ㅗ(o) you add ㅏ(a) and then vowels combine to make 와(wa).

If you have an ㅓ(eo) verb:

And the verb root ends in a consonant add an ㅓ(eo) to make your casual present tense.

If the verb root ends in ㅓ(eo) already you don’t need to add anything.

If the verb root ends in ㅐ(ae) you don’t need to add anything.

If the verb root ends in ㅡ(eu) remove the ㅡ(eu) and add ㅓ(eo).

If the verb root ends in ㅜ(u) add an ㅓ(eo) and then combine the vowels to make 워(wo).

If the verb root ends in ㅣ(i) add an ㅓ(eo) and then combine the vowel sounds to make ㅕ(yeo).

There it is in a nutshell: all the ways of conjugating Korean verbs and adjectives into the present tense. Except for irregular verbs, but we’re not learning those for a long time.

When you make a 2 word sentence with a noun and an adjective you can use a subject marker if you want. But like usual it is not required. If you don’t know how to use subject markers, well, like I said they’re optional so you don’t need to learn them, but if you are interested I have a video all about them here.

Thank you for studying with me.
WATCH THE LESSON: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8i8ZlYpDIg&t=9s