KOREAN LANGUAGE TUTORIAL

LESSON 10

Korean lessons: Lesson 10

How to actually conjugate verbs/adjectives to the Future Tense
In lesson 9, you learned how to conjugate words to the future tense by adding 겠어/겠어요/겠다/겠습니다 to the word stem.

Though adding ~겠~ to a word stem is one way to conjugate to the future, there is a more common way to conjugate to do this!
Before learning how to do to this, you needed to learn more grammar first (namely, how to conjugate 이다 properly). Either way, ~겠~ is still used in Korean, but not as much as the method you are about to learn.

For verbs or adjectives, when conjugating into the future tense, you must first add ~ㄹ/~을 to the stem of the word.

When you add ~ㄹ/을 to a word stem, ㄹ gets attached directly to stems ending in a vowel, and 을 gets added onto stems ending in a consonant.

For example:
가다 ends in a vowel, so
가다 + ㄹ = 갈
먹다 ends in a consonant, so
먹다 + 을 = 먹을
There is also one irregular involved with adding ㄹ/을 to a stem. You were introduced to this irregular briefly in Lesson 7, but I could not teach it to you perfectly because you didn't know about ㄹ/을 at that point.
If a stem ends in a final consonant that is ㄹ, when adding ㄹ/을, you actually don't add anything. That sounds weird, but it is true. Check it out.
갈다 is a word where the stem ends in a consonant, so you would normally add 을:
갈 + 을 = 갈을

But saying this is weird. Try to pronounce that: 갈을.
Instead, it is way easier to just say 갈.
Anyways, that's it for the irregular.
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This is going to sound extremely complicated (and it is): adding ~ㄹ/을 to a stem to an adjective turns it into a future adjective that can describe a noun:
행복한 사람 = happy person
행복할 사람 = a person a that will be happy
Similarly, (this where it gets complicated) adding ~ㄹ/~을 to a stem of a verb turns it into a future adjective that can describe a noun:
먹을 음식 = the food that will be eaten.
- Adding ~ㄹ/~을 to the stem of an adjective makes it a future adjective
- Adding ~ㄹ/~을 to the stem of a verb makes it a future adjective
- Because these newly formed words are adjectives that describe nouns, they must be followed by a noun
What does all this have to do with conjugating into the future?
When Korean people conjugate to the future, they usually do so by adding ~ㄹ/~을 to a verb/adjective.
This is essentially the same as adding ㄴ/은 to an adjective stem which you already know: (좋다 -> 좋은).
You should know, however, that you cannot end a sentence like this:
저는 좋은
Because 좋은 is an adjective that modifies a noun, a noun must follow 좋은:
저는 좋은 사람
Now, to end the sentence, you need to add 이다 to the noun:
저는 좋은 사람이다 = I am a good person.
So, again, when Korean people conjugate verbs/adjectives to the future, they usually do so by adding ~ㄹ/~을 to the word stem:
저는 행복할
저는 먹을
저는 공부할
But this changes verbs/adjectives into an adjectives that modify nouns. Therefore, (just like 좋은) a noun must follow these words. The noun that is always used in this situation is 것 (thing):
저는 행복할 것
저는 먹을 것
저는 공부할 것
Now, to end those sentences, you need to add 이다 to the noun:
저는 행복할 것이다
저는 먹을 것이다
저는 공부할 것이다
If you try to directly translate these sentences to English, they have the meaning:
I am a thing who will be happy
I am a thing who will eat
I am a thing who will study
But there actual meanings are:
저는 행복할 것이다 = I will be happy
저는 먹을 것이다 = I will eat
저는 공부할 것이다 = I will study
The 이다 can then be conjugated based on the level of politeness or formality. But keep in mind that even though this sentence is conjugated into the future, the 이다 should stay in the present tense. Because the ~ㄹ/을 creates a future sentence, 이다 does not need to be in the future.
것 is also sometimes shortened to 거, for no other reason than it is easier to say and creates a shorter sentence. For example, these two are exactly the same:
저는 밥을 먹을 것이에요 = I will eat rice
저는 밥을 먹을 거예요 = I will eat rice
Same with these:
나는 내일 친구를 만날 것이야 = I will meet my friend tomorrow
나는 내일 친구를 만날 거야 = I will meet my friend tomorrow
More examples:
저는 내일 학교에 갈 것입니다 = I will go to school tomorrow
저는 영어를 공부할 거예요 = I will study English
And, to apply the irregular that you learned:
저는 문을 열 거에요 = I will open the door (열 + 을 = 열)

If you can't understand anything in this lesson, that's okay!! The important thing you need to take from this is: When conjugating to the future, instead of doing this:
저는 하겠다 = I will do
do this:
저는 할 것이다 = I will do