Friday, December 8, 2017

Objects, Object Markers, and Three Word Sentences

Watch the Lesson: https://youtu.be/sQawaRvL0yw

Hey, this is another lesson on Korean grammar. I’m going to teach you to make three word sentences in this lesson. We’ve already learned about two word sentences that consist of a Subject and a Verb and a Subject Marker. Let’s use the sentence 'I ride' as an example.
Jeo-neun /je-ga ta-yo/ tam-ni-da
저는/ 저가 타요 /탑니다
Na-neon/ nae-ga ta

Without getting into too much review let’s recall that verbs have three different forms: casual, polite and formal. And subject markers have two different types: 는/은 (neun/eun) which puts emphasis on the action and 가/이 (ga/i) which puts emphasis on the subject.
But now, my fellow students, we will add another element to our sentences: an Object! An object is a noun that is acted upon. It is the thing in the sentence that is not doing the verb, but instead is having the verb done to it. In our example we said "I ride". Let’s add an object. "I ride the skateboard". Do we all see the difference between Objects and Subjects? The subject is doing the verb and the object is getting verbed. "I" is doing the riding and "the skateboard" is getting ridden.
Okay. In a typical English sentence we say our subject verb and object in the order:
Subject Verb Object
I ride the skateboard.
But in Korean the do it differently. They say
Subject Object Verb:
I the skateboard ride.
In Korean the verb almost ALWAYS comes at the end of the sentence. Even when we make longer more complicated sentences you will almost always find the verb at the end of the sentence.
 Let’s translate this into Korean. Let’s start with the casual form and the neun subject marker.
나는 스케이트보드 타
Na-neon seu-ke-i-teu-bo-deu ta
Check this out Korean does not have a word for “the” or a word for “a” so it’s literally translated as
I skateboard ride
Let’s do the polite form
저는 스케이트 보드 타요
Jeo-neon seu-ke-i-teu-bo-deu ta-yo
 And the formal form
저는 스케이트보드 탑니다
Jeo-neon seu-ke-i-teu bo-deu tam-ni-da

We could also use the 가 (ga) subject marker instead of the 는 (neun). And these 6 sentences are mighty fine. They make perfect sense. But you know what we could add to them???? An Object marker!

Object markers are a suffix that you attach to the end of the object of your sentence. They are 을 (eul) for objects that end in consonants and 를( reul) for objects that end in vowels. In our example we have an object that ends in a vowel so let’s add a 를(reul) object marker to all our sentences.
 casual form
나는 스케이트보드를 타
Na-neon seu-ke-i-teu-bo-deu-reul ta
 polite form
저는 스케이트 보드를 타요
Jeo-neon seu-ke-i-teu-bo-deu-reul  ta-yo
  formal form
저는 스케이트보드를 탑니다
Jeo-neon seu-ke-i-teu bo-deu-reul  tam-ni-da

Perfect. Look at all these beautiful un-ambiguous 3 word sentences. We know which word is the verb because the word at the end of the sentence is almost always the verb. We know which word is the object because it has an object marker, and we know which word is the subject because it has a subject marker, and what’s more is we know whether these sentences are emphasizing the action: "I ride the skateboard" or the subject: "I ride the skateboard." because they have a 는/은 (neun/eun) subject marker or a 가/이 (ga/i) subject marker.

So what did we learn today:
We learned what the object of a sentence is
We learned that the word order in Korean is Subject Object Verb. This is different from English
We learned that in a Korean sentence the verb almost always comes at the end
We learned that Korean does not have a word for “the” or “a”
And we learned that we have the option of adding an object marker (를/을) to the end of the object of the sentence in order to avoid confusion.
Check out the video if you like. 잘있어요! Thanks for studying with me.
Watch the Lesson: https://youtu.be/sQawaRvL0yw