Talk:Korean grammar

To Do

 * what is the diff of uri and urideul "we"?
 * is the plural deul required on other plural PNs & DEMs? Are there any nouns which require the plural?
 * work out PN chart better—which PNs correspond in style to which? Do we need to expand/reduce the chart for the basic PN set?
 * what is the practical difference between formality and politeness in Korean?
 * 1)'uri' and 'urideul' are often used with no difference.. but, these two have some slight functional and semantic gaps. In Korean sentences, 'uri + a noun(but restrictedly for a phrase, not a clause)' form is widely permitted(mainly to express the meanings of 'our ~' and 'we,~,'). However, 'urideul + a noun' form is permitted in more limited situations and sometimes sounds curious a little; And, saying 'uri', the speaker means(consciously or unconsciously) '(generally) we', but saying 'urideul', the speaker means '(more specific and concrete) we'; though, this semantic difference has been so faint.
 * 2)'deul' can follow other some plural PNs & DEMs; e.g., '저희들', '이것들', '저것들', '이곳들', ...etc. But 'deul' with an interrogative form(무엇들, 어디들), is rarely used, except for some special usages. Sosehe2
 * 3) The formality and the politeness are independent concepts. A professor may use formal but non-polite language to the students. Children may use polite but informal language to their parents. --Ieay4a (talk) 09:54, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Is this right???
Is 습시다 and (시)습시오 right? Isn't it ㅂ시다 and 십시오? I asked a native speaker friend and he said "습시다" and "(시)습시오" were wrong. Bluesoju (talk) 02:21, 21 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Could be. I'm only writing this article (or at least started it) because no-one else is doing it, and IMO it's rather pathetic not to cover Korean grammar in an encyclopedia. But I don't know what I'm doing, and I don't have good sources. kwami (talk) 08:58, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Then don't write until you get good sources! This is an encyclopedia, after all... --Kjoonlee 22:26, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I think ㅂ시다 and 십시오 is correct. I write below some examples:

Imperative, stem ending in consonant: 읽다 (read) -> 읽으십시오 (meaning: read!) Propositive, stem ending in consonant: 읽다 (read) -> 읽으십시다,읽읍시다 (meaning: why don't you read?, shall we read?) Imperative, stem ending in vowel: 가다 (read) -> 가십시오 (meaning: go!) Propositive, stem ending in vowel: 가다 (read) -> 가십시다,갑시다 (meaning: why don't you go?, shall we go?)

I found it at page 26 of "Basic Korean" (A Grammar and Workbook) of Andrew Sangpil Byon. Daniele. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.202.86.31 (talk) 14:24, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Propositive?
Is propositive a real word? I can't find it in the dictionary or on wikipedia. The only other place i've seen it was in one Korean book. If thats not a right term, then what is the proper term? --Bluesoju (talk) 01:25, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

This article needs experts
After looking at this article, there seem to be a lot of edits from people with no thorough understanding of Korean. In fact a lot of the info in this article I do not trust. For example I think the gerund section is totally wrong, but I will look across some textbooks to verify, the gerund is formed by adding the verb stem with -기 not 서. These are the types of mistakes that worry me. Also one author seems to not know proper Korean verb forms and doesn't seem to know the romanization rules, romanizing things things as they are spelled rather than how it's pronounced. --Bluesoju (talk) 23:42, 7 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't know Korean, but wrote the article because I thought it pathetic we didn't have an article on Korean grammar. Please improve all you can.
 * If 서 is not a gerund, could you clarify what it is?
 * The Romanisation is intentional. iss- should be written that way, not as it-, because if we write it it-, people will think there's a t in it. In a description of morphology, we need a morphological transcription, not a narrow phonetic one. Romanization should illuminate the language, not conceal it. We cannot assume that the reader knows hangul, so the transcription should work just as well if all hangul were removed. kwami (talk) 00:14, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
 * You're not following the basic rules of romanization. It's based on the pronunciation, not spelling. For example:

Check the pages yourself (and any other pages which contain romanized Korean), I'm undoing your edit. One doesn't need to be able to read Hangeul to have it romanized properly for them. --Bluesoju (talk) 06:11, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Sillim spelled 신림 is romanized as it's pronounced, Sillim, NOT sinrim.
 * Saetgang Station spelled 샛강 is not spelled as Saesgang, it's Saetgang. You put an ss for 있 on this article's page just because it's spelled that way, that's not how it works.
 * And probably the best example: Wangsimni Station. If we were to romanize 왕십리 using your style, it would be Wangsibri, instead it's romanized as pronounced, Wangsimni. You can even see a picture of it on it's page, officially romanized.
 * One more thing I wanted to add, you're not being consistent with the rest of the article, a previous author Romanized 무엇 asmueot (which is correct), while the stuff you added is the only parts of the article that don't do so. Also check the Romanization of Korean_language and Hangeul, especially particular word examples.


 * Morphophonemic transcription is perfectly acceptable. If you see it less frequently, it's because few texts are concerned with parsing Korean. But here we are: using a phonetic transcription is inappropriate in an article on morphology. (BTW, if you'd read the articles you pointed me to, you'd've seen the same thing there.) If you feel really strongly about it, you could and it in parentheses after the morphophonemic trans.


 * Thank you for pointing out the inconsistencies. When I get a chance I'll go through and fix them. kwami (talk) 08:16, 9 March 2010 (UTC)


 * You are the only one editing it inconsistently. You've admitted to having very little knowledge of Korean, so why can't you realize you're not doing the readers a favor. By the way, before your edit, people were already romanizing it correctly, you stepped it and broke the consistency. Show me one credible source that romanizes it the way you do. Notice none of the other Korean articles romanize the way you do? Do you know why? Because those people have a basic knowledge of Korean. I've showed you official romanizations and you still won't follow directions. My format is consistent with the other writers, you had no right to undo the first time, much less the second. --Bluesoju (talk) 07:32, 10 March 2010 (UTC)


 * As I've said, this article does not cater only to those who can read hangul. You still don't seem to understand that there is more than one approach to romanization. Transliterating 있 universally as iss is even illustrated in the romanization article. This was discussed a couple years ago, but it will take me some time to locate the discussion.


 * As for external sources, the problem is in how new this romanization is. But here are some that appear to be using this system with transliteration: "Bare objects in Korean" (in Non-definiteness and plurality), various articles in the Seoul journal of Korean studies, and Korean &/or corpus linguistics: proceedings of ICKL. kwami (talk) 10:50, 10 March 2010 (UTC)


 * The original authors in other Korean articles used the romanization officially supported by the South Korean government (Revised Romanization of Korean ). The other articles are already in RRK, so there is no reason to break the consistency because you feel like putting your own style. The other Korean articles also mostly use RRK including the Korean language article. You also don't seem to realize there is no such verb as 있.. that is not a verb, that is verb stem. Again, you shouldn't be adding to topics you don't know about, you're giving the readers misinformation. This is also an article on Korean grammar, so using RRK does not hinder the reader in anyway. At least with the Revised Romanization of Korean the user can get a sense of the correct pronunciation, while your style doesn't benefit the user in anyway except confuse the user on the pronunciation.--Bluesoju (talk) 03:38, 11 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Again, you do not appear to be familiar with RRK. The transliteration of this article is RRK! It is RRK transliteration rather than transcription, but that is common for linguistic topics. Repeating yourself will not change that. What I am ignorant of is Korean grammar, and I welcome you to make contributions or improvements on that subject, though so far you have not done so. However, that is not what you are objecting to. I am not ignorant of hangul, and my ignorance of RRK would appear to no greater than that of any other editor on WP, and less than most, including you. If you don't have any argument other than the fact that other articles use transcription, which merely repeats the obvious, then we are not engaging in discussion here, but merely talking past each other. kwami (talk) 05:53, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Let me be more clear then, the other articles use transcription, and when, if not nearly all cases of RPK usage, it is used as transcription that is used NOT transliteration. You are the only one using transliteration in these Korean articles, are you not going to admit that and the fact you are breaking consistency? There is no reason to use transliteration since this topic is about Korean grammar, this article is not about Korean transliteration, so there is no reason to break the consistency with other articles and in the manner that RPK is mostly used. Most textbooks, most Korean articles on here and all official RPK usage is transcription (as you can also confirm in the pictures earlier). I don't see any reason you need to use transliteration in a Korean grammar topic, enough to undo other people's work based on your personal preference. --Bluesoju (talk) 03:02, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

"all official RPK usage is transcription": False. RRK, as described by the govt. of the RPK, specifically allows for transliteration. But the RPK is irrelevant: Transliteration of hangul is typically used for grammatical analysis of Korean, as it more clearly illuminates the nature of the language. This is a grammatical article that includes grammatical analysis of Korean. Ergo transliteration is appropriate for this article. Now if you want to change your argument from "this is wrong", as a matter of fact, to "I disagree with this approach", as a matter of opinion, fine; that would be an issue for broader discussion and consensus. Unfortunately, we do not have much of a discussion going on here, and so far no-one has answered at the romanization article either. kwami (talk) 07:41, 12 March 2010 (UTC)


 * so this article is a good start. unfortunately kwami,  Bluesoju is right about transliteration favoring pronunciation over whatever it is you're advocating.  with that in mind, i went ahead and updated all of your intentional mistransliterations to the revised romanization, to include consideration of initial/medial/final consonant transliteration based on your sample phrases.  my philosophy on romanization: intentionally mistransliterating will further confuse someone who actually desires to learn and pronounce the language, especially if he happens to visit korea and read all of the signs as they are currently transliterated into english. Clown (talk) 04:39, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

I may not be an expert-expert on Korean, but I speak intermediate Korean, studied linguistics at an undergraduate level, and, more importantly, I own four for five large Korean reference grammars. I think may be able to help, but I didn't want to just edit the page without giving anyone the heads-up. I'm also a little bit considered about making sure I give the right citations and avoiding original research. It'll take me a long time to track them all down in my books.

The standard for transliteration and morphological analysis, which is used in most of the studious grammar books written in English, is Yale romanization. In my opinion, this article needs to have its examples rewritten in Yale rather than RR, with the appropriate note and link at the beginning of the page. RR can be used for pronunciation guides and for transliteration, but it's not very good for morphological analysis. There's a slightly different form of Yale used for morphological analysis, from the one used for transliteration, but it's very useful for both.

I can fix the references to Korean tense here that seem to have confused a lot of people, but it's very complicated and hard to explain briefly, so we might be better off creating a new article tense and aspect in Korean or similar and linking all the terms like retrospective and future-in-remote-past to the appropriate heading of that article.

Also, the description of -서 is wrong. It's not a gerund, it's a subordinating conjunction, which attaches to the past stem (해) of a verb.

I'll hold off on some of the bigger edits, but I can start correcting -서 right now. JohnDavidWard (talk) 16:49, 28 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, that may be worthwhile, though there is an article on Korean verbs, and it might fit in there. Regardless, I look forward to what you come up with. — kwami (talk) 05:09, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

A few issues
1.) I don't want to get into the dispute as to which transliteration method is most appropriate for this article, but I have edited it so that it is at least internally consistent as described in the footnotes.

2.) I have also deleted the hyphens following the particles "안" and "못" since those are treated as separate words (separated by spaces) in standard Korean orthography.

3.) I have removed several phonological descriptions, since those are already covered in Korean phonology.

4.) The section on gerunds makes very little sense to anyone who has a basic understanding of both the Korean language and linguistic terminology. The suffix "-서" is a conjunctive particle akin to "-며," "-면," "-고," "-니," "-니까," etc., and generally corresponds to English "when," "because," or "and." Thus, I don't really see how it could be considered a gerund. If by a gerund you mean a nominal verb form, then the suffix "-기," as mentioned above, is correct. In most contexts it corresponds closely to the English "-ing" gerund or to infinitive. For example, "I like watching movies"/"I like to watch movies" in Korean would be "영화 보기가 좋아." I did initially delete the entire section but it seems to have resurfaced. Further, I have no idea what the phrase "with vowel harmony to 사 -sa" is intended to mean. Is it referring to the verb stem "사-" meaning "buy"? If not, what does "사" signify?

5.) The section on number also has several problems. As mentioned in that section as it is currently written, Korean does not generally express number, and it is only rarely obligatory. Thus I don't see the point of dedicating such a large section to it while ignoring several other more salient features of Korean grammar. Also, the phrase "for example" is used to introduce the final three example sentences therein, but those sentences in no way illustrate the point described thereabove. The plural suffix is attached only to the subject in all three of them.

6.) The distinction in the instrumental case clitic is not strictly V/C, since "-로" also occurs with stems ending in ㄹ. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.175.41.14 (talk) 18:23, 4 August 2011 (UTC)  (Sorry, that was me. Brett (talk) 18:31, 4 August 2011 (UTC) )


 * I undid a couple of your changes, as I didn't see your comments here. Made a couple minor edits based on your comments.
 * I wrote the article w/o any real knowledge of Korean. I'm hardly the ideal author, but no-one else was doing it, and I couldn't believe we lacked a grammatical description of a language as important as Korean. (We've had lots of nitpicking on things I've done wrong, but little in the way of improving the article.)
 * Gerunds: Please correct the coverage rather than just deleting. 'Gerund' was probably a word I picked up from some not-very-reliable source; I remember thinking some stuff was rather dubious, but didn't have anything better to go on. I'm sure your comments here would be helpful in the article. -사 is just -서 after /a/, which is all that VH means in any of the suffixes or clitics.
 * Number: Improvements welcome! But if you think other parts should be expanded, that may be where your input would be more useful. — kwami (talk) 05:20, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Romanization Method
Well, I wrote here and I haven't heard anything back, so I'm going to assume no-one minds if I add Yale romanization to this article. JohnDavidWard (talk) 03:29, 6 December 2011 (UTC)


 * It would make it rather awkward and difficult to read. The official transcription is what we use by default on WP, and personally I don't see how adding a second would contribute anything.
 * You said above that Yale is superior for morphological analysis. How so? What we have now would seem to work fine, and AFAIK Yale does not transcribe archiphonemes as you would need to account for vowel harmony, nor are there dedicated letters for variable consonants. — kwami (talk) 05:12, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Yale does transcribe archiphonemes. Yale uses the consonant w to turn 으 into 우 which shows the underlying structure of irregular ㅂ-stems like 덥다, 더워 (tepta, tewe in Yale, or teWta, teWe using Martin's notation 'W'), it uses superscripts to show alteration between different consonants, it has optional macrons for vowel length, a way to write arae a, and a letter to show consonant reinforcement inside compounds, among other things. All these things have made Yale the standard for Korean linguistics. As an example of a pronunciation shift that's easy to show in Yale, there's 계셔요 to 계세요: kyesie yo -> kyesye yo -> kyesey yo.
 * I agree that we ought to use the standard romanization, but when it comes to linguistics, that is Yale. What we have obviously wasn't working fine, or there wouldn't be so much argument in the talk page about whether strictly transcribed RR is allowed. I'm also thinking about the future. The pages ought to have a consistent format when and if they expand more.
 * I was also worried about it being awkward and confusing. So I tested it and found that the Yale in bold stood out and was easy to tell apart from the RR. But you were working on this page before I was, so I'll leave the choice to you. JohnDavidWard (talk) 07:24, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * It's not a matter of who was here first, but what would make the article more accessible and informative. You may well be right, though I didn't notice any of those advantages in your version. (Perhaps I hadn't looked closely enough.) I'll restore your version. — kwami (talk) 07:42, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * You have 에게 as -uy key. I assume the -uy is a typo? — kwami (talk) 07:46, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Interestingly enough, no. The genitive ending 의 is pronounced the same as the locative ending 에, but X-에게 is actually a genitive compound X-의 게. I've added a note. JohnDavidWard (talk) 08:32, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * not. genitive ending 의 is pronounced more like the subject ending 이 than locative 에.  in modern seoul korean, 의 and 이 are almost indistinguishable.Clown (talk) 12:50, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Except in this case. — kwami (talk) 05:10, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
 * ?? Clown (talk) 01:19, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I'll try to add some things to show off the archiphonemes. JohnDavidWard (talk) 08:37, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

수동태 and 피동태
영어 수동태와 우리말 피동문 (2008-02-03). It seems that some South Korean linguists treats the verbal passives like English passives. This is an unorthodox approach. Komitsuki (talk) 02:04, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

-(i)na
I'm not sure -(i)na should be included as a separate informational clitic; I was under the impression that it's just a form of the copulative verb --Tyrannus Mundi (talk) 02:51, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
 * These charts need to be revamped eventually, but what I've read suggests that the development of the Korean copula into a regular verb is a recent phenomenon, and Korean linguistics are still arguing over whether Korean even has a copulative verb, let alone whether it has a full range of verbal forms. Sohn suggests it's a grammaticalized or frozen form of the copula (and I think Baxter had the same idea), but this is more a question of etymology than meaning. Lee and Ramsey class -(i) na alongside -to and -nun as "special particles". JohnDavidWard (talk) 18:25, 31 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Makes sense. I just brought it up since I've seen it mentioned as a "pseudo-particle" by various sources. Thanks for your great work on this article. --Tyrannus Mundi (talk) 02:13, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Position of the postposition section
I think the postposition subsection should be placed separately, instead of being listed under the substantives. The classification of words section mentions the postposition in the separate category of function words. Since the organization of the first half of this article follows the structure of classification of words section, and it has the section for other content words but no function words, it makes more sense to relocate the proposition subsection under a new separate section for function words. --Ieay4a (talk) 10:13, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Korean learning
Malaika 59.103.141.49 (talk) 11:09, 26 July 2022 (UTC)