Lesson 106: sentence structure, names, and titles

The first lesson about sentences rather than about letters. Eight differences from English, in the order the deck takes them.

1. The predicate goes last#

Korean is SOV; English is SVO. The verb closes the sentence, always.

Adjectives behave the same way — subject, then the adjective acting as the predicate:

There is no separate verb to be in those. 작아요 is the whole predicate.

The practical consequence is that you cannot start translating a Korean sentence until you have heard the end of it — negation, tense, politeness and whether it is even a question are all decided by the last syllable. Listen to the end of the sentence.

2. The predicate is conjugated — six speech levels#

Korean grammaticalises politeness. The same verb takes a different ending depending on your relationship to the person you are talking to, and there are six of them.

In practice you need two: 합니다 (하십시오체) and 해요 (해요체). 한다 you will read constantly and never say. 하오체 and 하게체 are costume drama.

The pronouns shift with the level too:

So one English sentence gives four Korean ones, and choosing between them is a statement about the relationship:

저는 당신을 사랑합니다.   Formal polite
저는 당신을 사랑해요.     Casual polite
나는 너를 사랑해.        Informal plain

3. Particles do the grammar#

English uses word order to say who did what. Korean tags each noun with a particle, and then the order is comparatively free.

Each pair is one particle with two forms — the first after a consonant, the second after a vowel. That alternation runs through the whole language and is picked up properly in lesson 109 and lesson 112.

4. The subject is usually dropped#

If it is obvious, it is omitted. Not optional-and-slightly-informal, as in English — omitted as the default.

Including 저는 in an answer like that sounds like you are contrasting yourself with someone else. Leave it out unless you mean it.

5. Honorifics reach into the vocabulary#

Politeness is not only verb endings. Some words have entirely separate honorific forms, used when the subject is someone you are elevating.

The 님 suffix in that fourth row is the one you will use hourly at work — see below.

Third-person pronouns exist but are used sparingly:

In conversation Koreans use a name plus 씨 or a title plus 님 where English would use he or she. 그녀 in particular is mostly a literary word.

6. Sino-Korean vocabulary and 한자#

Well over half of Korean vocabulary is Sino-Korean — words built from Chinese roots, written in Hangul but with 漢字 behind them.

You do not need to write 한자. It is worth knowing it is there, because it explains why 회의실 (會議室) decomposes so neatly into meeting-discussion-room, and why a word you have never seen is often guessable from its parts.

7. The plural marker 들 is optional#

Both correct. Korean nouns are number-neutral by default and 들 is added for emphasis or clarity, not for grammatical agreement. Over-using it is a common English-speaker tell.

8. Spacing changes the meaning#

띄어쓰기 is not cosmetic:

Identical letters in identical order. The space decides whether 가 is a subject particle or the first syllable of 가방.

Work culture: how Korean names are built#

Three syllables, typically: a one-syllable family name followed by a two-syllable given name. Family name first, always.

The last two show the exceptions: given names can be one or three syllables, and a handful of family names (선우, 남궁, 황보) are two.

South Korea has roughly 280 family names in total, and five of them cover more than half the population:

Against a population of 51,558,034. Each surname is further divided by 본관 — the ancestral seat — so 김해 김씨 and 경주 김씨 are different lineages sharing a name. This is why family name alone identifies almost nobody, and why Koreans use full names where English would use a surname.

Work culture: what to call people#

Two honorific suffixes, 씨 and 님, and a rule about which part of the name they attach to.

None of the 씨 forms are appropriate for someone senior to you. 씨 is a peer-to-peer or downward suffix. Upward, you use the person’s title plus 님 — never their name plus 씨.

The Hyundai ladder, and what HMGICS calls it#

Hyundai’s Korean grades map onto shorter HMGICS titles. What you actually say is the right-hand column.

The ○○ slot takes the full name, the given name, or the family name — all three are acceptable when a title follows:

유재석 책임님   ·   재석 책임님   ·   유 책임님

Compare that with 유 씨 above, which is rude. The title is what carries the respect, so once it is there the name can be shortened freely.

The deck flags this table with “check company’s policy and practice”, and that caveat is real — grade-to-title mappings get reorganised, and the safe move with anyone you have not placed is 매니저님 or their name as it appears in the directory.

Practice links#

• Understanding Korean sentence structure