Cause and Effect: Origins
Cause and Effect, or Lack Thereof
Cause and Effect: Multiple Causes
Linking Sentences: Basic Comparisons
Linking Sentences—Contrast: Although/But
Linking Sentences—Contrast: Not A, But B
Linking Sentences—Comparisons: As
Linking Sentences—Comparisons: Equals (or Not)
Thinking: Making Guesses
Thinking: Knowing
Thinking: Making Decisions
Emotions: Surprise
Emotions: Regret
Emotions: Thanks
Emotions: Desires
Emotions: Personal Experiences
Obligations, Orders and Permission
Warnings
Plans
Accidents
Progression: Review of Past and Future Tenses
Progression: While
Progression: Continuing States
Progression: Almost, But Not Quite
Progression: Putting Things in Temporal Order
If: If
If: Possibility and The Lack Thereof
Talking about What Others Have Said: Review of Reported Speech
Talking about What Others Have Said: Combinations
Talking about What Others Have Said: Spreading Rumors
Talking about What Others Have Said: According to
Giving Explanations
Location
Limits and Excess
Habits
Faking it
PART THREE FREQUENTLY SEEN WORD PARTS
Talking about People
Prefixes
Appendix 1: How to Sound Like a Native
Adverbs of Time
Adverbs of Frequency
Adverbs of Degree
Giving Your Opinion and Sounding Smart
How to Deal with 그렇다
Appendix 2: Useful Korean Language Resources
Index
How to Use This Book
When I first started studying Korean, I found there were any number of books, blogs, podcasts, classes, etc., available for beginners, and I rejoiced. However, as my studies progressed, the quantity of appropriate materials dropped sharply and while there were still many textbooks, very few of them explained the material in a useful way: for instance, though they would happily explain that 어서 eoseo and 으니까 eunikka both roughly meant “so,” there was little guidance as to when it was appropriate to use each form. These books also tended to be poorly organized, with ㄴ다고 해서 dago haeseo in one chapter, ㄴ다고 하니까 dago hanikka several chapters later and ㄴ다고 하는데 n dago haneunde a few chapters again after, even though these are all very similar expressions.
In this book, I have attempted to synthesize all the information gained from my studies into a format that’s useful and convenient for others to follow. I am not planning to teach you these expressions for the first time but rather to provide a useful guide to help you make sense of what you’ve already partially learned and to help you use these expressions more fluently, much like a toolbox to help you form correct and natural-sounding Korean sentences rather than ending every single sentence with the same old 아/어/여요 a/eo/yeoyo.
To this end, I have mainly focused on verbs and adverbs. Constructing Korean sentences is really all about what you do with the verbs, and a whole lot of implications are packed into different verb endings. There’s a little about pronouns because contractions are used all the time (just like in English) but rarely taught, and then some information about adverbs at the end because a good adverb can really spice up a sentence (and because I myself find them confusing at times and so I suspect others might as well).
I really haven’t focused on vocabulary since you can probably use a dictionary just as well as I can. There are some good vocabulary books listed in the Appendix if you want a little more direction.
There are only a few different ways to attach verbs and endings in Korean and I have summarized these on page 19, which you can refer back to anytime. Each expression comes with its own set of “hooks.” For example, every expression starting with “ㄴ/는” attaches to verbs the same way: ㄴ to verbs ending in vowels and 는 to verbs ending in consonants, regardless of tense or any other factor. This seems daunting at first, but with practice it will become second nature.
Because this book is intended to take you from beginning to advanced Korean, I recognize that my readers will be at somewhat different levels and will know or not know different things, so I’ve summarized what I consider to be the basic points of Korean grammar in “The Basics of Korean” for you to check if you need a little help. I haven’t spent much time on them because it’s not terribly difficult to find good-quality materials on basic Korean grammar. If you find you’re not quite ready for this book yet, I’ve listed some useful beginning Korean books in the Appendix.
I have also tried to keep the language in my examples fairly simple. When possible, they all end in the 아/어/여요 (polite) form because those are the most useful and I wanted to keep everything consistent for the sake of clarity. Unless I say otherwise, you can use any of these expressions with any level of politeness.
The Rating System
(or, How Important Is This Grammar Point to Me?)
All the information in the section “The Basics of Korean” is material you should know before reading the rest of this book. Material in the appendixes is stuff I think might be useful for you to know, but you don’t have to study it if you’d rather not. Beyond that, I’ve rated everything in the main part of the book according to a star system, which works like this:
| ★★★★★ | Critical; with only the five-star expressions, you can communicate almost everything you need to say, and without them you’ll have trouble understanding any more than the most basic of sentences. |
| ★★★★ | Very helpful; you should learn this if you want to communicate well in Korean |
| ★★★ | Useful, fairly common, and will help you sound more natural and fluent |
| ★★ | Not that important; grammar only the TOPIK (Test of Proficiency in Korean) people care about |
| ★ | Don’t worry about this unless there’s some reason you need to know it |
Expressions are also rated according to whether or not they’re used more in speaking or in writing.
| The expression is: | |
| Speaking > Writing | used more often in speaking than in writing |
| Speaking < Writing | used more often in writing than in speaking |
| Speaking
|