LEARN KOREAN (한국어) [GRAMMAR] #1

I WANT TO: ~고 싶다

~고 is a verb that can connect two clauses/sentences together. However, there are many other usages of ~고 when also combined with other words. What you are about to learn is SO common (in Korean and English), and I almost want to apologize for waiting until this lesson to finally introduce it to you. I just felt that there were other things you needed to learn before this.

Anyways, enough apologizing, lets get down to business.

Adding ~고 싶다 to the stem of a verb gives it the meaning of "I want to ____." Very easy to use:

저는 한국어를 배우고 싶어요 - I want to study Korean
저는 캐나다에 가고 싶어요 - I want to go to Canada
저는 여자친구를 위해 편지를 쓰고 싶어요 - I want to write a letter for my girlfriend

It can be used with 되다 to indicate that you want to be/become something:

저는 선생님이 되고 싶어요 - I want to be/become a teacher

It can be used in the past tense as well:

저는 선생님이 되고 싶었어요 - I wanted to become a teacher
그 여자는 나랑* 결혼하고 싶었어 - that girl wanted to marry me

Notice that when talking about 'marrying' somebody, 'with' must be used in Korean instead of attaching '를/을.' Because of this difference in English and Korean, many Korean people will mistakenly say "I want to marry with you."

Actually, you have come across this ~고 싶다 grammar concept before, but you probably didn't even realize it. In Korean, there are two ways to say "I miss ____." One way is to use the word "그립다" and is used when you "miss" something other than a person (I miss my hometown). The word for missing a person in Korean is 보고 싶다. See anything funny about that word? 보고 – 싶다? Literally, it means "I want to see:"

저는 친구를 보고 싶어요 - I miss my friend/I want to see my friend

~고 싶다 is not used with adjectives. In English, it is acceptable to say something like "I want to be happy." If you want to say something like this in Korean, you need to add an additional grammatical principle that changes the meaning to "I want to become happy." You will learn how to create this meaning with ~아/어지다 later.

One thing to note is that 싶다 actually acts as an adjective, and must be conjugated as one. This means that:

나는 먹고 싶다 (I want to eat) would be a correct conjugation, however
나는 먹고 싶는다, would be an incorrect conjugation

Also, notice the difference between 원하다 and ~고 싶다. You can say 원하다 when you want an object:

저는 그 책을 원해요 - I want that book

and you can use ~고 싶다 when you want to do a verb:

저는 그 책을 읽고 싶어요 - I want to read that book

You can also use "안" or attach "~지 않다" to 싶다 to indicate that one does not want to do something. For example:

저는 술을 안 마시고 싶어요 - I don't want to drink alcohol
저는 울고 싶지 않아요 - I don't want to cry
나는 너를 파티에 초대하고 싶지 않아 - I don't want to invite you to the party

Sometimes you will learn grammatical principles that are not used so much – but the concepts you learned in this lesson are used all the time. Up until now, actually, it has been hard for me to continue to create good example sentences without the use of ~고 and ~고 싶다.

The further and further you go along in these lessons, the more complicated the example sentences will become!