LEARN KOREAN (한국어) [GRAMMAR] #1

ASKING QUESTIONS IN KOREAN

Asking questions in Korean, at first glance, is very easy. For the most part, asking questions in Korean without the use of a "question" word (who/what/when/where/why/how/how much/how many) is incredibly simple.

Asking questions in English is unnecessarily complicated. If I asked you the question "Do you like sports?" In English, what is the meaning of the word "do" in that sentence? In English, whenever we ask a question (without a question word), we need to include the words did/do/will to make the listener know that we are asking a question.

Did you go to the park?
Do you like sports?
Will you eat with us?

It is so confusing in English, and my two sentence explanation doesn't really explain it very well. Luckily, this is not an English learning! You are here to learn how to ask questions in Korean. Enough of this English nonsense.

In Korean, if you are asking a question that does not require the use of a question word (one more time: who/what/when/where/why/how/how much/how many) you don't need to do anything structurally to make that sentence a question. All you need to do is raise the intonation of the end of the sentence to make it sound like a question. For example, if you want to say "My mother ate" you already know that you can say:

엄마는 먹었어요 - My mom ate

But if you want to ask somebody "did you eat?" You just raise the intonation of the end of the sentence to make it sound like a question:

엄마는 먹었어요? - (literally means "did mom eat?")

Remember that Korean people rarely say the word "you," so if you ask a question to the person you are talking to about the person you are talking to, you can just omit the subject of the sentence.

밥을 먹었어? - Did (you) eat?
집에 갔어? - Did (you) go home?
소식을 들었어? - Did (you) hear the news?

If you are talking to somebody and the subject of the sentence is not the person who you are talking to, you can just use the subject as normal. Also notice that regardless of the tense of the sentence (past/present/future) you don't need to do anything special other than raise the intonation at the end of the sentence:

남동생은 울었어요? - Did your brother cry?
한국은 좋은 나라야? - Is Korea a good country?
엄마도 올 거야? - Will mom come too?

As I said, you don't need to change anything structurally in these sentences to make them questions. There are, however, a few ways that you can change the structure of a sentence to make the sentence a question (if you want).