Chapter 7 of 17 · Explore the Korean path
How sentences work · Chapter 7 of 17
How a sentence tells you who did what
The verb ends the sentence, so read the last word first. Small tags glued onto the nouns say who acted and what it happened to, which lets the nouns move.
≈ 4 min of reading · Practise at your own pace
What’s in this chapter
- The verb ends the sentence. Read the last word first: it tells you what happened.
- Korean marks a noun’s job with a small tag glued onto it, where English uses word order. Grammar books call these particles.
- 이 / 가
i / ga marks the one doing it; 을 / 를 eul / reul the one it happens to; 은 / 는 eun / neun what the sentence is about. - Because the tags carry the meaning, the nouns can move; only the emphasis changes.
I 나는
나는 개를 본다.
na-neun gae-reul bon-da
Korean order: 나는 개를 본다. Follow the colours and watch the verb move to the back.
English marks a noun’s job by position. Korean marks it with a small tag stuck onto the noun — a particle. Most tags come in pairs, and one rule chooses between them: a noun ending in a consonant takes the half that starts with a vowel, so the two glue together smoothly.
One tag, two shapes
Watch that rule happen four times. Each row takes a plain noun and gives it back with a tag attached.
The four tags worth knowing now
A tag tells you what job its noun is doing. These four turn up in nearly every line you will read.
| Tag | Job |
|---|---|
| 은 / 는 | as for — what the sentence is about |
| 이 / 가 | the one doing it |
| 을 / 를 | the one it happens to |
| 에 | to a place, at a place: 숲에 |
The first is the one English lacks: “as for the bear…” — you have been seeing it on 나는
The dog 개가
개가 나를 본다.
gae-ga na-reul bon-da
The payoff: 나를 개가 본다
Find the verb, then the tags
- 여우가 새를 본다.
Last word is the action; then who carries 가, who carries 를?
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yeo-u-ga sae-reul bon-da — “The fox sees the bird.” - 새를 여우가 본다.
The nouns swapped places, but not their tags.
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sae-reul yeo-u-ga bon-da — the same meaning. Only the emphasis moved. - 곰이 숲에 있다.
One tag marks the doer, one the place, and the verb is the location one.
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go-mi su-pe it-tta — “The bear is in the forest.”