Hello My fellow students this is Making Korean Verbs Negative Part 2. In part one we learned two important words 안“an” which means “not” and 못 “mot” which means “can’t” and we learned how to add them to verbs to make them negative. In this lesson we will learn another way to make verbs negative and it will look kinda similar to ‘an’ and ‘mot’ but different You’ll see. I’ll show you.
Let’s start with “not”.
If you’ve got a verb like 자다 (ja-da) to sleep you can turn it into to not sleep like this:
First cut off the -da and then add + 지 않다 (ji an-da) to the end
Now we have to not sleep 자지 않다 ja-ji an-da.
Now we have a negative verb in the infinitive form. And from here we can conjugate it into any tense we like. For example the simple present
“Don’t sleep”
Ja-ji an-a 자지 않아
Ja-ji an-a-yo 자지 않아요
Jaji an-seum-ni-da
You can do this with any verb and any adjective because in Korean adjectives are verbs.
Now let’s do “can’t”
We’ll use ja-da again as an example “to sleep” let’s turn it into “to can’t sleep”
First we cut off the -da and then add + 지 못하다 (ji mot-ha-da) to the end
Now we have to cant sleep ja-ji mot-ha-da.
It’s a negative verb! And it can be conjugated into any tense you like. Here’s my preferred Example the simple present ‘I can’t sleep’ in the casual, polite and formal forms respectfully
나는 자지 못해 Na-neun ja-ji mot-hae
저는 자지 못해요 Jeo-neun ja-ji mot-hae-yo
저는 자지 못합니다 Jeo-neun ja-ji mot-ham-ni-da
This method can be used with ANY verb or ANY adjective.
And
it’s just that simple. We now know how to turn “to verb” into “ to not
verb” and “ to can’t verb”. Simple remove the -da and add “ji an-da” or
“ji mot-ha-da”. I works universally for any verb or adjective. Now go
forth and negate the practice words! Thanks for
studying with me.
WATCH THE LESSON: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CtekiyQT70
