Korean grammar |
---|
Korean postpositions, or particles, are suffixes or short words in Korean grammar that immediately follow a noun or pronoun. This article uses the Revised Romanization of Korean to show pronunciation. The hangul versions in the official orthographic form are given underneath.
Preceding syntactic element | Example sentence | Translation |
---|---|---|
(n-)eun 은/는 | Used as a topic particle or a subject particle. Eun 은 is used following a consonant, Neun 는 is used following a vowel. | |
Nouns (topic) | Naneun haksaengida. 나는 학생이다. | I am a student. |
Nouns (topic) | Igeoseun yeonpirida. 이것은 연필이다. | This is a pencil. |
Nouns (genericized nominative) | Chitaneun ppareuda. 치타는 빠르다. | Cheetahs are fast. |
Nouns (topic) | Jeoneun jjajangmyeon juseyo. 저는 짜장면 주세요. | I'd like a jajangmyeon. |
i/ga 이/가 | Used as an identifier or subject particle to indicate the nominative case. I 이 is used following a consonant, Ga 가 is used following a vowel. | |
Nouns (agent) | Naega masyeotda. 내가 마셨다. | I drank. |
Nouns (identifier) | Jeogeosi Han-gang-iya. 저것이 한강이야. | That is the Han River. |
Nouns (specific nominative) | Chitaga neurida. 치타가 느리다. | This cheetah is slow. |
kkeseo 께서 | The honorific nominative marker. It could be added to Neun, Do, and Man to form 께서는 (topic), 께서도 (too/also), and 께서만 (only), respectively, which are the respective honorific forms. | |
Nouns | Seonsaengnimkkeseo osyeotda. 선생님께서 오셨다. | (The) teacher arrived . |
(r-)eul 을/를 | Used as an object particle to indicate the accusative case. Eul 을 is used following a consonant, Reul 를 is used following a vowel. | |
Nouns (objective) | Naneun ramyeoneul meogeotda. 나는 라면을 먹었다. | I ate ramen. |
ege/hante 에게/한테 | Used as a dative particle. Ege 에게 is the literary form, and Hante 한테 is the colloquial form. | |
Noun | Neohuiege hal mari itda. 너희에게 할 말이 있다. | I have something to tell you. |
kke 께 | Kke 께 is the honorific dative marker. | |
Noun | Goyongjukke seonmureul deuryeotda. 고용주께 선물을 드렸다. | I gave a gift to my employer. |
(eu)ro 으로/로 | Used to mark the instrumental case, which can also denote destination or role. Euro 으로 is used following a consonant other than 'ㄹ', which is abbreviated to Ro 로 following a vowel or the consonant 'ㄹ'. | |
Noun (means) | KTX-ro Seoureseo Busankkaji se sigan geollinda. KTX로 서울에서 부산까지 3시간 걸린다. | It takes 3 hours to go from Seoul to Busan via KTX. |
Noun (destination) | Naeil Hojuro tteonamnida. 내일 호주로 떠납니다. | I am leaving for Australia tomorrow. |
Noun (role) | Unjeonsaro chwijikhaeyo. 운전사로 취직해요. | I'm going to be working as a driver. |
e 에 | Used for any words relating to time or place. Sometimes used for cause. | |
Time (noun) | Maikeureun parweore watda. 마이클은 8월에 왔다. | Michael came in August. |
Location (noun) | Jedongeun ilbone gatda. 제동은 일본에 갔다. | Jedong went to Japan. |
Cause (noun) | Jamyeongjong sorie kkaetta 자명종 소리에 깼다. | Woke up by the sound of the alarm. |
eseo 에서 | Translates to: "from" (ablative) when used with a motion verb. May also be used as "at", "in" (locative) when used with an action verb which is not motion related. | |
Noun (from) | Junggugeseo wasseo. 중국에서 왔어. | I came from China. |
Noun (in) | Bang-eseo gongbu-reul haet-da. 방에서 공부를 했다. | I studied in my room. |
buteo 부터 | Translates to: Used to show when or where an action or situation started. (Egressive) | |
Noun | Cheoeumbuteo kkeutkkaji 처음부터 끝까지 | From beginning to end |
kkaji 까지 | Translates to: Used to illustrate the extent of an action, either in location or time, generally meaning "until", "up to". (Terminative) | |
Noun | Cheoeumbuteo kkeutkkaji 처음부터 끝까지 | From beginning to end |
man 만 | Translates to: "only", used after a noun. | |
Noun | Ojik jeimseu-man hangugeo-reul gongbu-haet-da. 오직 제임스만 한국어를 공부했다. | Only James studied Korean. |
ui 의 | Functions as: possession indicator, noun link, topic marker. | |
Noun: possession | Migugui daetongryeong 미국의 대통령 | President of the United States |
do 도 | Used as an additive particle. When dealing with additive qualities/descriptions of the same subject, see ttohan 또한. | |
Nouns | Geunyeodo gongbuhanda. 그녀도 공부한다. | She studies too. |
(g)wa/rang 과/와/랑 | Translates to: "and" (conjunction); "with" or "as with" (preposition). Gwa 과 is used following a consonant, Wa 와 is used following a vowel. Wa 와 is the literary form, and rang 랑 is the colloquial form. | |
Nouns: conjunction | Neowa na 너와 나 | You and I |
(y)a 아/야 | The vocative marker. A 아 is used following a consonant, Ya 야 is used following a vowel. | |
Noun | Minsuya! 민수야! | Minsu! |
(i)yeo 이여/여 | The vocative marker, with added nuance of exclamation. Iyeo 이여 is used following a consonant, Yeo 여 is used following a vowel. | |
Noun | Naui georukhasin gusejuyeo. 나의 거룩하신 구세주여. | O my divine Redeemer. |
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes representing phonemes, units of sounds that distinguish words, of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllable, and logographic systems use characters to represent words, morphemes, or other semantic units.
A context-sensitive grammar (CSG) is a formal grammar in which the left-hand sides and right-hand sides of any production rules may be surrounded by a context of terminal and nonterminal symbols. Context-sensitive grammars are more general than context-free grammars, in the sense that there are languages that can be described by a CSG but not by a context-free grammar. Context-sensitive grammars are less general than unrestricted grammars. Thus, CSGs are positioned between context-free and unrestricted grammars in the Chomsky hierarchy.
Persian, also known by its endonym Farsi, is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and used officially within Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan in three mutually intelligible standard varieties, namely Iranian Persian, Dari Persian and Tajiki Persian. It is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within Uzbekistan, as well as within other regions with a Persianate history in the cultural sphere of Greater Iran. It is written officially within Iran and Afghanistan in the Persian alphabet, a derivation of the Arabic script, and within Tajikistan in the Tajik alphabet, a derivation of the Cyrillic script.
In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domains such as phonology, morphology, and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, semantics, and pragmatics. There are currently two different approaches to the study of grammar: traditional grammar and theoretical grammar.
Korean is the native language for about 80 million people, mostly of Korean descent. It is the official and national language of both North Korea and South Korea, but over the past 75 years of political division, the two Koreas have developed some noticeable vocabulary differences. Beyond Korea, the language is recognised as a minority language in parts of China, namely Jilin Province, and specifically Yanbian Prefecture and Changbai County. It is also spoken by Sakhalin Koreans in parts of Sakhalin, the Russian island just north of Japan, and by the Koryo-saram in parts of Central Asia. The language has a few extinct relatives which—along with the Jeju language (Jejuan) of Jeju Island and Korean itself—form the compact Koreanic language family. Even so, Jejuan and Korean are not mutually intelligible with each other. The linguistic homeland of Korean is suggested to be somewhere in contemporary Manchuria. The hierarchy of the society from which the language originates deeply influences the language, leading to a system of speech levels and honorifics indicative of the formality of any given situation.
In linguistics, syntax is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), agreement, the nature of crosslinguistic variation, and the relationship between form and meaning (semantics). There are numerous approaches to syntax that differ in their central assumptions and goals.
Tamil is a Dravidian language natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia. Tamil is an official language of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the sovereign nations of Sri Lanka and Singapore, and the Indian Union territory of Puducherry. Tamil is also spoken by significant minorities in the four other South Indian states of Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, and the Union Territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It is also spoken by the Tamil diaspora found in many countries, including Malaysia, Myanmar, South Africa, United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia and Mauritius. Tamil is also natively spoken by the Sri Lankan Moors. One of 22 scheduled languages in the Constitution of India, Tamil was the first to be classified as a classical language of India.
Telugu is a Dravidian language native to the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, where it is also the official language. Spoken by about 96 million people (2022), Telugu is the most widely spoken member of the Dravidian language family, and one of the twenty-two scheduled languages of the Republic of India. It is one of the few languages that has primary official status in more than one Indian state, alongside Hindi and Bengali. Telugu is one of the six languages designated as a classical language by the Government of India. It is the 14th most spoken native language in the world. Modern Standard Telugu is based on the dialect of Krishna-Godavari delta region in Coastal Andhra.
Classical Chinese, also known as Literary Chinese, is the language of the classic literature from the end of the Spring and Autumn period through to either the start of the Qin dynasty or the end of the Han dynasty, a written form of Old Chinese. Classical Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese that evolved from the classical language, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese. Literary Chinese was used for almost all formal writing in China until the early 20th century, and also, during various periods, in Japan, Ryukyu, Korea and Vietnam. Among Chinese speakers, Literary Chinese has been largely replaced by written vernacular Chinese, a style of writing that is similar to modern spoken Mandarin Chinese, while speakers of non-Chinese languages have largely abandoned Literary Chinese in favor of their respective local vernaculars. Although languages have evolved in unique, different directions from the base of Literary Chinese, many cognates can be still found between these languages that have historically written in Classical Chinese.
Samuel Elmo Martin was a linguist known for seminal work on the languages of East Asia, a professor at Yale University, and the author of many works on the Korean and Japanese languages.
Generative grammar, or generativism, is a linguistic theory that regards linguistics as the study of a hypothesised innate grammatical structure. It is a biological or biologistic modification of earlier structuralist theories of linguistics, deriving ultimately from glossematics. Generative grammar considers grammar as a system of rules that generates exactly those combinations of words that form grammatical sentences in a given language. It is a system of explicit rules that may apply repeatedly to generate an indefinite number of sentences which can be as long as one wants them to be. The difference from structural and functional models is that the object is base-generated within the verb phrase in generative grammar. This purportedly cognitive structure is thought of as being a part of a universal grammar, a syntactic structure which is caused by a genetic mutation in humans.
The close front unrounded vowel, or high front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound that occurs in most spoken languages, represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet by the symbol i. It is similar to the vowel sound in the English word meet—and often called long-e in American English. Although in English this sound has additional length and is not normally pronounced as a pure vowel, some dialects have been reported to pronounce the phoneme as a pure sound. A pure sound is also heard in many other languages, such as French, in words like chic.
Idu is an archaic writing system that represents the Korean language using hanja. The script, which was developed by Buddhist monks, made it possible to record Korean words through its equivalent meaning or sound in Chinese.
Roy Andrew Miller was an American linguist best known as the author of several books on Japanese language and linguistics, and for his advocacy of Korean and Japanese as members of the proposed Altaic language family.
In linguistics, relexification is a mechanism of language change by which one language changes much or all of its lexicon, including basic vocabulary, with the lexicon of another language, without drastically changing the relexified language's grammar. The term is principally used to describe pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages.
Alexander (Sasha) Vladimirovich Vovin was a Soviet-born Russian-American linguist and philologist, and director of studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris, France. He was a world-renowned linguist, well known for his research on East Asian languages.
Urarina is an isolated language spoken in Peru, specifically in the Loreto Region of Northwest Peru, by the Urarina people. There are around 3,000 speakers in Urarinas District. It uses a Latin script. It is also known as Itucali, Simacu or Shimacu.
The traditional periodization of Korean distinguishes:
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It entails the comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language — cognitive, social, environmental, biological as well as structural.
The Ainu languages, sometimes known as Ainuic, are a small language family, often regarded as a language isolate, historically spoken by the Ainu people of northern Japan and neighboring islands.