LEARN KOREAN (한국어) [GRAMMAR] #1

WORDS THAT ARE THE SAME BUT HAVE DIFFERENT MEANINGS (KOREAN HOMONYMS)

This may be something that is obvious when learning any language, but I wanted to point it out. In Korean, there are a lot of words that have more than one meaning. It is like this in English as well, but most people never notice it until they stop to think about how many there actually are. An example of this is "쓰다":

쓰다 - to write
쓰다 - to use
쓰다 - to wear a hat

However, when a word has many meanings, but most of those meanings can be combined into a few 'umbrella term' meanings – only those 'umbrella term' meanings will be shown. A good example we talked about earlier is 들다. 들다 has so many meanings, most of which can fit into three or four broad definitions.

Either way, be aware that many words have many meanings in Korean:

나는 편지를 친구를 위해 쓸 거야 - I am going to write a letter for my friend
나는 그 기계를 썼어 - I used that machine
저의 아버지는 모자를 항상 써요 - My father always wears a hat

Another word that has many common meanings is 걸리다:

걸리다 - to be (in the state of) hanging
걸리다 - to be caught/stuck/trapped
걸리다 - to "take" a certain amount of time
걸리다 - to catch a cold/sickness

There are more usages, but lets just focus on these four for now:

걸리다 - to be hanging
Similar to the passive verbs you learned in the previous lesson, this verb can be used to indicate the passive 'state' of hanging:

그림은 벽에 걸려 있어요 - The picture is hanging on the wall

걸리다 - to be caught/stuck/trapped
A verb that can be used when something trips/gets caught/gets trapped:

나는 줄에 걸렸어 - I tripped over the line

걸리다 - to "take" a certain amount of time
This is a very useful form that we will talk about in greater detail in a later lesson. You can use this to indicate how long it takes to get from one place to another:

서울부터 인천까지 2시간 걸려요 - It takes 2 hours to get from Seoul to Incheon
우리 학교에서 식당까지 10분 걸려요 - It takes 10 minutes to get from our school to the restaurant

Notice however, that even though each of these has a very different meaning in English (to be hanging, to be caught, to take a certain amount of time) they are actually pretty similar. When a picture is 'hanging' on the wall, technically it is 'stuck/trapped' on the wall. Similarly, if you go from Incheon to Seoul, the time it takes (2 hours) is 'stuck/trapped.' Haha, No? Well, that's just the way I explained it to myself when I first learned some of these words.

Try to think outside of the English box. One word in Korean is often used to represent many words in English. Usually these words aren't actually very different, but the different translations lead us to believe that they are in fact very different. Read these sentences again and see if you can understand them this way:

The picture is caught on the wall
I was caught over the line
2 hours are caught to get from Seoul to Incheon

Obviously not natural in English – but you can probably understand what these sentences mean.

My point? Just because it looks like a word has many meanings doesn't necessarily mean that those meanings are vastly different from each other. Think about the example (들다) one more time. 들다 has many meanings – but most of which can be grouped into only 2 or 3 different meanings. Always keep this in mind.