Learn Korean (eng) (grammar & voc)

Verbs

Verbs

Present Tense

🔹When the last syllable of a stem ends in a consonant, you add 는다 to the stem:

a. 먹다 = 먹는다 = to eat (먹 + 는다)
b. 닫다 = 닫는다 = to close (닫 + 는다)

Examples:
나는 문을 닫는다 = I close the door
나는 밥을 먹는다 = I eat rice

🔹When the last syllable of the stem ends in a vowel, you add ㄴ to the last syllable followed by 다

c. 배우다 = 배운다 = to learn (배우 + ㄴ다)
d. 이해하다 = 이해한다 = to understand (이해하 + ㄴ다)
e. 가다 = 간다 = to go (가 + ㄴ다)

Examples:
나는 친구를 만난다 = I meet a friend
나는 그것을 이해한다 = I understand that
나는 한국어를 배운다 = I learn Korean
나는 집에 간다 = I go home

Past Tense

Before you learn this, you need to know something important. Korean grammar is based on adding things directly to verbs or adjectives to have a specific meaning. This is a little bit confusing for you right now because this is really the first time you have heard about this.
Well, actually, in the section above, you did this. Remember, to conjugate to the present tense, you must add the following to verbs:

- 는다 if the stem ends in a consonant and ㄴ다 if the stem ends in a vowel

Hundreds of grammatical principles (not just conjugations, but grammatical principles
that have actual meanings in sentences) are used by adding certain things to the stems of
verbs and adjectives. You have not learned about any of these yet, but I want to show you
an example of some things that you will learn about in the future. The following are added to the stems of verbs and adjectives to have specific meanings:

- ㄴ/은 후에 to mean “after”
- 기 전에 to mean “before”
- 기 때문에 to mean “because”
- 아/어서 to mean “because”
- 아/어 야 하다 to mean “one must”
- 아/어서는 안 되다 to mean “one shouldn’t”

The list could go on and on forever.
Notice that some of these grammatical principles require the addition of “아/어.”
Many grammatical principles (or conjugations, or any other thing) require the addition of “아/어” to the stem of a verb or adjective. Notice that the “slash” indicates that you need to choose what actually gets added to the stem.
In some cases it is “아”, and in some cases it is “어”. The following is the rule that you can use to determine if you should add “아” or “어”:

- If the last vowel in a stem is ㅏ or ㅗ (this includes rare cases of the last vowel being ㅑ or ㅛ) you add 아 followed by the remainder of the grammatical principle. (The only exception is "하."

If the last syllable in a stem is "하", 여 must be added to the stem followed by the remainder of the grammatical principle instead of 아.

- If the last vowel in a stem is anything but ㅏ or ㅗ you add 어 followed by the remainder of the grammatical principle

When conjugating to the past tense, we need to add “았/었다” to the stem of a word (or 였다 in the case of 하다).
Following the rule above, 았다 is added to words with the last vowel being ㅗ or ㅏ and 었다 is added to words with the last vowel being anything but ㅏ or ㅗ. Finally, ~였다 is added to words with the last syllable being "하." For example:

나는 밥을 먹다 = I eat rice (note that this sentence is unconjugated)

The last vowel in the stem is ㅓ. This is not ㅏ or ㅗ. So, we add 었다 to the stem: