STUDY Korean! (한국어 공부하세요!)

2: Characteristics of The Korean Language

》Word Order

   - Korean is a subject-object-verb (SOV) language (앤드류가 한국어를 공부해요 "Andrew-Korean-studies").
   In Korean, verbs and adjectives appear at the end of the sentence. All other elements such as nouns (subject and/or object), adverbs, and numbers, appear before verbs and/or adjectives.
    In addition, modifiers (adverbs, demonstratives, and relative clauses) appear before the modified words.

Consider the following English sentence:
"Peter studies history at the library in the afternoon."
    We know that "Peter" is the subject since it comes before the verb "studies," and "history" is the object as it appears after the verb. Notice that extra elements such as "at the library" and "in the afternoon" are placed after the object. In addition, English prepositions always appear before nouns, as in "at the library."

However, the word order of Korean would be:
"피터가 도서관에서 역사를 공부해요"
"Peter library-at history studies."

  Instead of English prepositions, Korean has particles that always come after the noun. For instance, we know 피터 is the subject, since it is marked by the subject particle 가. 도서관 is the location since it is marked by the locative particle 에서 and, 역사 is the object, since it is marked by the object particle 를.

Consider this example:
앤드류가 집에서 점심을 먹어요
"Andrew eats lunch at home"

  The subject particle 가 marks 앤드류 as the subject of the sentence. The location particle 에서 marks 집 as the location. In addition, the object particle 을 marks 점심 as the object of the sentence.

NOTE:
   Korean sentences do not always follow the SOV pattern because of particles. Korean nouns (as subjects or objects) can be freely arranged in a sentence.
The following six sentences mean "Andrew eats lunch at home."

앤드류가 집에서 점심을 먹어요 "Andrew home-at lunch eats"
앤드류가 점심을 집에서 먹어요 "Andrew lunch home-at eats"
집에서 앤드류가 점심을 먹어요 "Home-at Andrew lunch eats"
집에서 점심을 앤드류가 먹어요 "Home-at lunch Andrew eats"
점심을 앤드류가 집에서 먹어요 "Lunch Andrew home-at eats"
점심을 집에서 앤드류가 먹어요 "Lunch home-at Andrew eats"

   The fact that Korean nouns can be freely arranged differs from English,
since the English word order typically determines grammatical relationships. The word order affects the Korean language only when certain particles are missing in given sentences (often during the colloquial usages).

Meanwhile, for delimiting the meaning of the nouns, the tone is often used in English. In Korean, however, the changing word orders (moving the important elements near the verb and less essential elements to the front of the sentence) or using the special particles (topic particle 은/는) delimit the meanings of nouns.

》Context-oriented Language

   In Korean, the most important elements tend to cluster to the end of the sentence. The further the word is from the end of the sentence, the less important the element is and more likely it is to be dropped. In other words, what appears at the very end of the sentence (verbs) is most important.
   - Korean sentences that have no subject or object but just a verb or an adjective, such as in 먹어 "eat," are grammatically correct and natural in conversation.  Examples:

안녕하십니까? "How are you?"
are peaceful
뭐 공부하세요? "What do you study?"
what study
감사합니다 "Thank you"
thanks do

  Notice that none of the above expressions contains the first or second person pronoun. What determines the omission is the context.

   -The Korean language is a context-oriented language in that any contextually understood elements may be omitted unless they are indispensable.

》General-to-specific  Language

   Korean is a "general-to-specific" or "big-to-small" language. In other words, Koreans write or say general, or bigger, units before the specific, or smaller, units.
   Koreans say or write the last name before the given name:
  김정민
(Kim Jeongmin)

  When writing an address, they write the name of the country, followed by the province, city, street, house number, and the name of the receiver.
대한민국, 경기도, 서울시, 금천구, 독산동 113, 김정민
(Republic of Korea, Kyeonggi Province, Seoul, Geumcheon-District, Doksan 113, Kim Jeongmin)

   When writing a date, the year comes first, followed by month and the day.
2007년 8월 5일
(2007-year 8-month 5-day)

》Honorific Language

   Korean is an honorific language in that it has grammatical elements that are used to indicate social meanings involved in contexts such as speakers' attitudes (respect, humility, formality) toward who they are talking to or talking about.
  For instance, Koreans use hierarchical address-reference terms of titles as well as various speech levels to indicate politeness, intimacy, and the formality level of discourse during interaction. In addition, they use humble person pronoun forms such as 저 "first person singular" and 저희 "first person plural" to indicate humility.

  - Koreans use honorific suffix -(으)시 and euphemistic words to indicate respect toward a subject of higher social status. The following examples illustrate how Korean honorifics work:

(a) 어제 우리 모임에 와 주어서 고마워
"(I) appreciated that you came to our meeting yesterday."
(b) 어제 저희 모임에 와 주시어서 고맙습니다
"(I) appreciated that you came to our
meeting yesterday."

   As seen above, the referential meanings of the two sentences are the same. However, their social meanings are different.
   In (a), the use of the plain first person pronoun, 우리, the absence of the honorific suffix -시, and the use of an intimate speech level -어 indicate that the speaker is likely addressing a person either of equal (=power) or lower status (-power), and whom he/she knows well (-distance). Because it lacks proper
honorific elements, the example in (a) would be rude in a formal situation if it was used by a lower-status person (a college student) addressing a higher-status person (e.g., a professor).

To make (a) socially appropriate in a +power situation (talking to someone of higher status), one should change 우리, first person plural genitive pronoun, to 저희, humble first person plural genitive pronoun, as shown in (b).
   In addition, one should add the honorific suffix -시 to the gerundive verb 주어서 "giving (me)" making 주셔서 thereby transforming it into an honorific verb, and use the deferential speech level sentence-ending 습니다 to change 고마워 "thanked (you)" to 고맙습니다, in the deferential speech level.

   The above examples shows how the use of honorifics in Korean functions as a social indicator. In addition, they demonstrate that how an utterance is said is more important than what is said.