- taglish (sinulat ko pa nung jeje days kaya kelangan pa i-edit sensya na)
- ongoing
- slow updates because im busy with uni
Credits to:
Prime Korean by Johnson Park
As mentioned in the Characteristics of the Korean Language, Korean is an agglutinating language. It means that Korean uses little grammatical devices attached to words to specify their roles in a sentence. English is not an agglutinating language, employing rather a fixed word order and prepositions in order to specify the role of each part.
A subject of a sentence is the agent (doer) of the action described by the sentence. Assuming that a state of being can also be treated as an action, a subject can take any kind of predicate, i.e., a verbal, an adjectival, or a nominal predicate. Think of "S goes," "S is bad," and "S is a man." In each case, S is the subject. To mark this subject, Korean attaches either 이 or 가 to it. -이 is used when the subject word ends without a final consonant (patch'im), whereas -가 is for those ending without a final consonant.
Only nouns can be subjects in Korean, such is the case in English. In other words, when you see a part of a sentence attached with -이 or -가, you will know that it must be a noun. However, you might hear sometimes people say sentences without using subject markers -이/가 for subjects. It is because the sentences were simple and a conversational reality is presumed. For these sentences, subject markers can be replaced by a short pause. In sentences the structure of which is complex, or in written forms, the markers should be specified.
Finally, we get a sentence meaning, "The embassy is far."
Now, let's look at some more examples.
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Difference Between Subject Marker(가,이) and Topic Marker(는,은)
Pretty much like the object marker, you can guess that for subject marker is place after the subject. "가" is place if the word didn't have a final consonant and "이" is place if the word have a final consonant. However, the topic and subject in a sentence may be the same sometimes so how should we know when to put topic marker and when to put subject marker.
A topic of a sentence is not nessesary a subject. A inanimate object can also be the topic of a sentence. A topic of sentence is generally what the sentence is about and therefore the topic marker is use to mark the topic of a sentence and to differentiate two possible topic of conversation.
A subject marker is use to identifies the subject: the noun in the sentence, and to give emphasize to it. Sometimes it is very hard to tell when to use which. One of the easy way is to remember topic marker emphasize more on the verb while subject marker emphasize more on the subject.
Example:
제가 샀다 - I bought (It's not anyone else but it was I who bought it)
저는 샀다 - I bought (I bought rather than doing something else)
Both sentence mean I bought but 제가 샀다 identifies the subject, I, and so puts more emphasis on the subject rather than the rest of the sentence whereas 저는 샀다 emphasizes on 샀다. So in 제가 샀다, it is more concerned about WHO bought while 저는 샀다 is more concerned about what I DID.
Another thing you should notice is when using subject marker "가", the pronoun 저 is turn into 제. This is the same for 나 and 너. 나 will turn into 내 while 너 will turn into 네. Let me give you more example.
제가 먹었어요 - I ate 내가 봤어요 - I saw 네가 샀어요 - You bought 집이 크다 - The house is big 하늘이 높다 = The sky is high
Another way to explain the difference between subject marker and topic marker:
Who bought a new t-shirt? 제가 갔어요 - I went (Notice that you cannot answer 저는 갔어요, because the person is asking who it was that went.
What did you do in the shopping mall? 나는 구두를 샀어요 - I bought shoes (Notice that the person is asking what I did in the shopping mall and so it is unnecessary to use the identifier particle. The person asking the question already knows that it was I who did something in the shopping mall. Therefore 는 is used rather than 가)
