Korean from Dummies

Since we covered one kind of to-from in the last post I thought we should look at another kind today. 

Our words are: 부터 and 까지! I’m fairly sure that if you’ve listened to Korean music or watched a drama or two you’ve heard the sentence “머리부터 발끝까지...” for me this sentence is followed up by saying “Hot issue”.. actually it’s sung, not spoken.. *sigh*... I feel so old. 

So “머리부터 발끝까지...” means “from the head to the end of the foot”, I think perhaps they thought 발가락 (toe) sounded too long, but I don’t know. As you can see both 부터 and 까지 come after a noun. 

Sometimes 에/에서 and 부터-까지 can be interchangeable as they both me to-from. So when do you use what? 에 and 에서 are used mostly to mark locations and are therefore called location-marking particles. 부터-까지 are not location-marking but indicate the beginning and end of something. They can be used together or on their own. Often they are used to mark time but in a broader view, it can be categorised as how far something stretches. 

부터 has the meaning of “from” or “starting at”. 까지 has the meaning of “to” or “ending at” or “until”. 

오늘부터 운동을 할거예요.  I’ll start working out from today. 먹어부터 해요.  First thing I’ll do is eat. 

올 때까지 기다릴게요. I’ll wait until you come. 여기까지 끝이에요.  It stops here.

아침부터 저녁까지 안 먹었어요. I didn’t eat anything all day (from morning to evening).  얼굴부터 성격까지 모든 걸 나빠예요.  From his looks to his personality, everything about him is bad. As you can see, most of our examples are about stretches in time but the last one is about just how much of that guy is unbearable because it stretches far and wide.  

A lot of the time when you translate from Korean to English you’ll not actually translate 부터-까지, because it makes for awkward, unnatural sentences but it’s important you know what it means and when to use them when you speak Korean.

Now I know I said it’s not a location-marking particle and it’s not but you will see it with locations from time to time when that happens it’s usually about duration/distance between locations, or where your journey (or such) begins or ends. So if you’re just saying that you’re going from somewhere you’d use 에서 but if you’re saying the starting point is from somewhere you’d use 부터.

카페에서 거기까지 갈 게요.   I’m going there from the cafe.

카페부터 거기까지 갈 게요.  I’m going there from the cafe.

Spot the difference in translation - there is none. But in Korean, it is now implied that the cafe is the very start of your journey. Personally, I think it’d be more natural if it’s your home but this is a made up example. 

I hope it makes it clearer if not there’s always our inbox!  

So I did do some posts about pronunciation also with ㅅ as a component buuuuut the very, very basic take on whenㅅ is “s” and when it’s “t/d” is whether or not it’s followed by a vowel or consonant. 

Vowel = sConsonant = t/d

So an example would be: 

있다 = itt-da있어요 = Iss-eo-yo

(Both of these mean “to be/to exist” the first is in the lectical form(how it’s written in a dictionary) and the second is conjugated)

To see more on how to pronounce ㅅ go to Consonant assimilation Other pronunciation rules

Hi! The master list seems to be down altogether and I don’t know how to fix it atm, but if you’re still interested here’s the link to the building blocks post.

I know this blog haven’t been active for a while and I wanna start it up again. 

The reason I stopped posting was that I realized I made too many mistakes and got too caught up in just getting notes and to be honest that made me really embarrassed and ashamed. I’ve never pretended that I knew it all but I stopped doing proper research and therefore before making anything new we will be correcting the previous mistakes. I’m sorry to everyone who has learned something wrong and to all our lovely followers who were sad to see us disappear.   

Ooooh I love the random ones! 

So I must admit that I wasn’t familiar with this version off the English word but assuming it’s the verb form of profanity, I’d say you can trust google translate in this case.  

Haha, whoops, my intentions were to leave "informal" but I forgot to change it �� thanks for fixing my spelling error, my Korean spelling isn't the best.

I noticed that you said "오늘 뭐해요", meaning "What are you doing today", when the question had "What did you do today?". It's actually "오늘 뭐해서?"(formal). I just wanted to point that out if you didn't notice that.

Ah yes that is true although past tense would be “뭐 했어요?” and if it’s formal like you write in the parenthesis you need to remember the 요 otherwise it’s not formal ^^ The “서” you write is usually a contraction of 그래서 which means “so” or “therefore”.

Aw thank you! That’s a pretty good example actually! 

In the first sentence you’re talking about today “today is…” in the second sentence you’re talking about what someone did today “you did…today”. 

You see how the two are different? The topic in the first sentence is 오늘 and that’s why you use the topic marker here. In the second sentence “오늘 뭐했어요?” the topic is hidden/implied, the topic would be you/he/she/it/the pony/whatever that did something today and that’s where you’d use your topic marker. So if 오늘 did/does something you could put an 은 on it. 

Vegetables 1

Vegetables 2

First of all, be patient, this is a whole new way for you to write, your letters will look weird for a while, just like when you were learning to write as a child. The more you practice the better you will get, this is boring but true. A good exercise is to copy Korean song lyrics or short texts that you find. 

For lyrics, there are Klyrics and Color Coded Lyrics and many more. Short text you can find on this app or Jr. Naver - don’t worry about understanding everything and you can pause the videos to read and write at your own pace. 

I’m sorry I haven’t responded to this before (and for not posting anything new) I’ve had some personal business to attend to, and I’ll probably be busy for a while - but I am here. 

I had to read up on some rules because this is super hard for anyone who isn’t native.  A lot of the time the two particles are interchangeable, but there can be a difference in meaning that sometimes means you can’t interchange them. Here are some of those things: 은/는 are topic particles/ topic marker  이/가 are subject particles/ subject marker  The topic is the person or thing which is the main focus of your sentence. The subject of the sentence is not always the topic. Furthermore, when you use 은/는 it can work as an “emphasiser”. So in your sentence :선생님은 교실에 없습니다 the emphasis is on the teacher being absent, if anyone else isn’t there, that’s not important to the speaker, it’s only the teacher who’s important here.   

Now, I found some rules, that I haven’t heard of before… or maybe I just forgot, I honestly don’t remember. But they seem plausible soooo: If your sentence contains two nouns and a descriptive verb, you should generally use the topic marker on the first noun and the subject marker on the second noun.If your sentence contains 있다/없다 you should always use the subject marker on the noun in front of it same goes for 아니다 (but not 이다). 

Like I said, I’m not sure about these last rules, so if any of you smarties know anything remember sharing is caring!