Learn Korean Language

Lesson 1

안녕하세요 = hello

감사하다 and 고맙다 are the two words that are commonly used to say "thank you." However, they are rarely used in those forms and are almost always conjugated. They can be conjugated in a variety of ways, which you won't learn until Lesson 5 and Lesson 6. I will show you a list of the more commonly used forms, but I can't stress enough that you won't understand how this works until later lessons:

감사합니다
감사해요

고마워
고맙습니다
고마워요

잘 지내세요? = How are you?
Technically the appropriate expression in Korean, but not as common as "how are you" in English. I would say that using "잘 지내세요?" is an English style of greeting people in Korean.

제발 = Please

It is, of course, important for you to memorize these expressions in Korean, but you need to know that there is a reason why they are said that way. For now, don't worry about why they are said that way, and simply memorize them. We will get back to them in later lessons when they become important.

Sentence Word Order

One of the hardest things to wrap your head around in Korean is the alien-like sentence structure. For our purposes in Lesson 1, Korean sentences are written in the following order:

Subject - Object - Verb
(for example: I hamburger eat)

Or

Subject - Adjective
(for example: I beautiful)

I am going to quickly explain what a "subject" and "object" mean, as your ability to understand later concepts depends on your understanding of this.

The subject refers to person/thing/noun/whatever that is acting. The subject does the action of the verb. For example, the subject in each sentence below is underlined:

I went to the park
I will go to the park
My mom loves me
He loves me
The dog ran fast
The clouds cleared up

In English, the subject always comes before the verb.

The object refers to whatever the verb is acting on. For example, the object in each sentence below is underlined

My mom loves me
The dog bit the mailman
He ate rice
Students studied Korean

In English, the object always comes after the verb. However, a sentence with a verb does not require an object. For example:

I slept
I ate
He died

Sometimes there is no object because it has simply been omitted from the sentence. For example, "I ate" or "I ate rice" are both correct sentences. Other verbs, by their nature, cannot act on an object. For example, you cannot place an object after the verbs "sleep" or "die:"

I sleep you
I die you

Subjects are also present in sentences with adjectives. However, there is no object in a sentence with an adjective. The subjects are underlined in the following adjective-sentences below:

School is boring
I am boring
The movie was funny
The building is big
My girlfriend is pretty
The food is delicious

It is incredibly important that you understand this from the very beginning. Every Korean sentence MUST end in either a verb (like eat, sleep or walk) or an adjective (like beautiful, pretty, and delicious). This rule is so important that I'm going to say it again: Every Korean sentence MUST end in either a verb or adjective.

It is also important to point out here that there are two ways to say "I" or "me" in Korean. Depending on how polite you need to be speaking, many things within a sentence (mostly the conjugation) can change. You won't learn about the different honorific conjugations until Lesson 6, so you do not need to worry about understanding those until then. However, before you reach those lessons, you will see two different words for "I," which are: