LESSON 69

91 0 3
                                    

Korean Lesson: Lessons 69

I am worried about/that…: ~ㄹ/을까 봐
Before we get into anything, lets talk about the word “걱정하다.” This is actually a weird verb because there doesn’t seem to be any meaningful difference between ‘걱정하다’ and ‘걱정되다.’ Because ‘걱정하다’ ends in ‘하다,’ you would think that it would have the active meaning of “to worry” (as in, I am worrying my brother). In addition, because ‘걱정되다’ ends in ‘되다,’ you would think that it would have the meaning of “to be worried” (as in, I am worried about my brother). The weird thing about this word, however, is that it appears that both 하다 and 되다 forms have the passive meaning of “to be worried” and not “to worry.”
Though it appears you can use ‘걱정되다’ and ‘걱정하다’ to mean essentially the same thing, personally, whenever I talk about myself being worried, or somebody else being worried, I always say “걱정되다.” The only time I ever use “걱정하다” is when telling somebody not to be worried; for example: 걱정하지 마! = Don’t’ worry!
Anyways, now that we know that, lets talk about the grammatical form ~ㄹ/을까 봐. When putting this at the end of a sentence, you can create the meaning of “I am worried about/that….” 걱정되다 or 걱정하다 are usually placed after this form. For example:
시험을 잘 못 볼까 봐 걱정돼요 = I’m worried that I won’t do well on the exam
비가 올까 봐 걱정돼요 = I’m worried that it will rain
그녀가 나를 좋아하지 않을까 봐 걱정돼요 = I’m worried that she won’t like me
Notice that in all three of those examples, the speaker is worried about something happening in the future. You would never use this form to indicate that you are worried about something currently going on (as that doesn’t make sense in English, either).
In order to say that you are worried about whether or not something happened in the past, you can conjugate the verb/adjective before  “~ㄹ/을까 봐.” For example:
시험을 잘 못 봤을까 봐 걱정돼요 = I am worried that I didn’t do well on the exam
비가 왔을까 봐 걱정돼요 = I am worried that it rained (doesn’t really make sense)
그녀가 나를 좋아하지 않았을까 봐 걱정돼요 = I am worried that she didn’t like me
You can also conjugate 걱정되다 into the past tense to indicate that you were worried:
시험을 잘 못 봤을까 봐 걱정되었어요 = I was worried that I didn’t do well on the exam
비가 왔을까 봐 걱정되었어요 = I was worried that it didn’t rain (doesn’t really make sense)
그녀가 나를 좋아하지 않았을까 봐 걱정되었어요 = I was worried that she didn’t like me
Often times in speech, however, the 걱정되다 is omitted and you can simply end the sentence with “~ㄹ/을까 봐.” Technically it may be grammatically incorrect but it is common in every day conversation. Usually when ‘걱정되다’ is omitted, the meaning of it being there is implied in the sentence. For example:
비가 올까 봐… = I was worried it was going to rain…
네가 안 올까 봐 = I was worried that you weren’t going to come…
In fact, you can actually treat ~ㄹ/을까 봐 as a connecter between two clauses. We will talk about how to do this in the next section.
I am worried that/about, so…: ~ㄹ/을까 봐
In the previous section, you learned about adding ~ㄹ/을까 봐 to sentences. You learned that these sentences can end with the word 걱정되다 or simply end with ~ㄹ을까 봐. However, by placing another clause after ~ㄹ/을까 봐, you can create the meaning of “I am worried about/that, so….” For example:
비가 올까 봐 우선을 가져왔어요 = I am worried that it will rain, so I brought an umbrella
저의 여자 친구가 슬플까 봐 그녀를 위해 꽃을 샀어요 = I am worried that by girlfriend will be sad so I bought her flowers
그 것이 너무 비쌀까 봐 돈을 많이 가져왔어요 = I’m worried that it will be too expensive, so I brought more money

KOREAN LANGUAGE TUTORIALTahanan ng mga kuwento. Tumuklas ngayon