Learn Korean (TTMIK)

Lesson 9

 What more is there about the particles eun/neun/i/ga ?

(1) In addition to marking topics, eun / neun has the nuance of “about” something, “as for” something, or even “unlike other things” or “different from other things.”

(2) In addition to marking subjects, i / ga has the nuance of “none other than” “nothing but” and also, when used inside a complex sentence, the role of marking the subject without emphasizing it too much.

Let’s look at some examples of  (1) . 

i-geo = this / sa-gwa = apple / ye-yo = to be / is i-geo sa-gwa-ye-yo = This is an apple.

You can add eun / neun to this, and in this case the subject, i-geo, ends in a vowel, so add neun. i-geo-NEUN sa-gwa-ye-yo = (The other things are not apples, but)  THIS is an apple. So you can imagine someone talking like this:

i-geo keo-pi-ye-yo (= This is coffee)

i-geo-NEUN mul-i-e-yo (= That was coffee, but THIS ONE, it’s water.)

i-geo-NEUN o-ren-ji-ju-seu-ye-yo(= And THIS ONE, it’s different again, it’s orange juice.)

i-geo-NEUN mwo-ye-yo?](= And what about this one? What is it?)                                  

 As you can see from this example, eun / neun has the role of emphasizing the topic of the sentence by giving it the nuance of “that one is ... and/but THIS ONE is...” So sometime it is unnatural to use eun / neun in every sentence you say. So in Korean, although eun and neun are generally topic marking particles, people often save eun / neun for really emphasizing the topic in contrast to the other parts of the sentence. For example, if you want to say “The weather’s nice today.” in Korean, you can say it in many ways. (Don’t worry about the entire sentence here. Just focus on the use of eun / neun )

1) o-neul nal-ssi jot-ne-yo= The weather’s good today.

2) o-neul- EUN nal-ssi jot-ne-yo ( The weather hasn’t been so good lately, but TODAY, it’s good.)

3) o-neul nal-ssi- NEUN jot-ne-yo (Today, not necessarily everything else too, but at least the weather is good.)

So THAT’s how powerful and useful the topic marking particles (eun / neun) can be in changing the nuance of your Korean sentences! Let’s look at some examples of  (2) .

jo-a-yo = it’s good / mwo = what / i/ga = subject marking particlesImagine that one says “jo-a-yo” and that means “It’s good.” or “I like it.”But if you are not quite sure WHAT is good, you can ask “WHAT is good?” or “What are youtalking about?”                 .

In order to express your curiosity as to “WHAT” is good, you can ask: mwo-GA jo-a-yo?

Here the word ga emphasize what the subject of the verb “to be / jo-a-yo” is. If one says, ABC jo-a-yo = ABC is good. And if you disagree and you think XYZ is good, not ABC. You can express your opinion that the subject of “being good” should be XYZ, not ABC, by saying: ABC jo-a-yo? XYZ- GA jo-a-yo. So, with i and ga, you can add more flavor and more concrete meanings to your Korean sentences when you want to emphasize WHO did something, WHICH ONE is good, and etc. Is that everything? Almost.

As you can see from above, eun/neun and i/ga both have different roles, but the roles of eun / neun as a ‘contrast’ factor is much stronger, because you can change the topic of a sentence with eun / neun  So, when you form complex sentences (i.e. I think the book that you bought is moreinteresting than the book I bought.), in general, eun / neun is not so commonly used all over the sentences. Often times eun / neun/i/ga can be dropped, but when you need particles to clarify the meaning, i/ga will be more commonly used.