Struggles and Successes in Language Learning

Function

The function of this form is to express disbelief of something, or to express that you think there is no possibility of something being true. For example, we can use it in these situations:

There’s no way such a famous restaurant would suddenly shut down.

There’s no way he would have failed if he had really studied that hard.

Usage

Before getting into how to use this, I want to break the form down a little, as you can see there are three distinct parts to it. The first is our future noun modifier ending, which you can read about more here. The second part, 리, is what is known as a 의존명사, or dependent noun. You will never see this noun in isolation, but used here it refers to the “reason” or “logic” for something. Slap 없다 or 만무하다 on the end, and you are saying that there’s no reason why something will happen or would have happened.

The difference between using 없다 and 만무하다 at the end of this form is negligible. 만무하다 is a word derived from Hanja (일만 ten thousand 만 萬, 없을 not existent 무 無) that means “to be completely none.”없다 is far more commonly used in daily speech while 만무하다 is pretty solidly relegated to the realm of more formal speech.

To use this grammar form, attach -을 리가 없다/만무하다 to descriptive or action verb stems that end with consonants and -ㄹ 리가 없다/만무하다 to stems that end with ㄹ or vowels. Be careful of any irregular conjugations!

This form can be used with past tense verbs as well as present tense; just be sure to put the verb in past tense and then attach -을 리가 없다/만무하다. Let’s check out some examples!

Usage examples

그렇게 유명한 식당이 갑자기 문을 닫을 리가 없어요. (There’s no way such a famous restaurant would suddenly shut down.)

실제로 공부를 그렇게까지 열심히 한 거였으면은 시험에 떨어질 리가 없었을 거예요. (There’s no way he would have failed if he had really studied that hard.)

둘이 사이가 정말 안 좋잖아. 승규 씨는 새린 씨를 도와줬을 리가 없어. (Those two really don’t get along [Lit. Their relationship is really bad], you know. There’s no way Seunggyu would have helped Saerin.

김 의원께서는 뇌물을 받으셨을 리가 만무하다고 봅니다. (We believe there is no reason why Senator Kim would have taken bribes.)

Bonus: Can we use 있다 with this form?

We know that 있다 is essentially the opposite of 있다. Can 있다 be used in this form as well as “-(으)ㄹ 리가 있다”?

The answer is both yes and no! -(으)ㄹ 리가 있다 does not lend itself to declarative sentences, but it can work in questions. For example, one could ask:

그렇게 유명한 식당이 갑자기 문을 닫을 리가 있겠어요? (Is there any reason why such a famous restaurant would suddenly shut down?)

지민 씨가 면접에 빠졌을 리가 있어요? (Is there any reason why Jimin would have missed the interview?)

Function

As already stated, we use -보다 to make comparisons. For example, in English we might say something like:

This cell phone is more expensive than that one.

This movie is less exciting than that one.

Junho is smarter than Dani.

All of these are covered by -보다!

Usage

To form a sentence with -보다, you would use the basic format "Y는 X보다 (descriptive verb/adjective)" to mean "Y is more (adjective) than X." Note that this basic format only works when you want to say that something is more (adjective) than something else. If you want to specify "less than," you need to use the adverb "덜," which means "less."

이 핸드폰은 저것보다 비싸요. (This cell phone is more expensive than that one.)

이 영화는 그 영화보다 덜 재미있어요. (This movie is less exciting than that one.)

준호는 다니보다 더 똑똑해요. (Junho is smarter than Dani)

            --> Note: Just like we have "덜" to indicate "less," we also have "더" to indicate "more"! -보다 on its own automatically indicates "more than," but you can emphasize it a little by adding "더" after -보다.

We can also expand a little bit on the basic format and be more descriptive with our comparisons by using other grammatical structures that we know.

승현 씨는 엘리 씨보다 공부를 잘하지 못해요.  (Seunghyun is worse at studying than Ellie.)

이 회사는 전에 일하던 회사보다 월급이 더 높아요. (The salary at this company is higher than the salary at the company I worked at before.)

              --> Note that 더 is separated from -보다 here. A general rule of adverbs in Korean is to try to place them as close as you can to the verbs they modify.

보다 at the start of a sentence??

Sometimes you will see 보다 at the start of the sentence. In this case, it's similar to -보다 in the sense that they both indicate a comparison. However, 보다 at the start of a sentence (or somewhere not attached to a noun as previously shown) is an adverb that indicates something is more (insert descriptor here) than anticipated. For example:

A: 주혁 씨는 정말 묵묵하네요. (Juhyeok is pretty quiet.)

B: 좀 친해지면 보다 말이 많은데요. (If you become close with him, he talks more than you might think.)

As you can see, Juhyeok is not really being compared to some external thing. Rather, the comparison is expectation vs. reality.

Traditional

我從來不喜歡去醫院。因為我也不喜歡吃藥，也有點怕針，所以不常去醫院。但是有時候沒辦法需要去醫院。我來韓國要去眼科醫院。那時候我的韓語還有點差所以我的同事陪我去。醫院真不錯了，醫院裡很乾淨，醫生很友好了。可是我最喜歡的就是真便宜的醫療費。雖然我做了些特別的測試我只付了二萬韓幣。我真開心了! 醫療費比美國真便宜! 我的同事也吃驚了，因為依她看太貴了!

Simplified

Traditional

我的工作是小學老師。平時我覺得是個很有意思的職業，但有時候並不有意思，又麻煩又累。今天有兩位六年級女學生在課上吵架了。沒有特別的原因，不過她們互相真不喜歡。我對她們說: "有時候沒辦法需要跟不怎麼喜歡的人在一起合作做什麼。我知道妳們不是好朋友，但在學校對同學說可以讓別人糟心的話不行。" 她們諦聽，說我的話是對的。可是……五分鐘以後她們再吵架了! 真累呀……

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Traditional

我覺得最好的客戶服務讓客戶想再去這個商店，也讓客戶很開心。我去買東西的事後不怎麼喜歡員工在我身後追隨我一直問: "你要我給你幫助嗎?" 我覺得不舒服，也覺得有點麻煩。如果員工讓客戶任從找東西就好。而且需要員工很友好。誰喜歡去員工都很生氣的商店? 沒有人! 我住在首爾的時候有一個麵包房。麵包也很好吃，業主也真友好，我去這裡的時候業主跟我聊天，有時候給我免費的麵包。這裡客戶服務真棒!

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Traditional

今天我來說一點我決定學中文的原因。其實我開始學中文以前學了韓語用的漢字。因為韓語有很多本著漢字的詞匯所以我覺得學漢字很重要。學了大概五百字以後我覺得不妨學中文! 但是這不是我唯一的原因。我從小對外語有很多興趣，所以很想學跟中文一樣有意思的語言。而且我想去台灣旅行。我去過一次那裡，可是那時候我只會說 "你好"、"謝謝" 這類的。如過我再去台灣要努力跟台灣人說話!

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Traditional

我不常看電視和電影。小時候很喜歡看卡通，也很喜歡看關動物的那類。現在我家沒有電視，可是我有時候上網用叫網飛的流媒體網站看些電視秀。最近我追劇了"謀殺犯的形成"。這個秀是一位男人的真故事。他說他誰都沒殺害，但是警察都以為這個男人是謀殺犯。如果你有空我勸你看這個記錄片。

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Traditional

最近我來叫仁川的城市工作，但是來這裡以前我住五年首爾。仁川和首爾真不一樣可是我都喜歡。仁川離海邊不遠，所以我有空的時候去海邊看波浪。首爾比這裡熱鬧，但是有更多好吃的飯館和好玩的東西。還有我朋友大部分住在首爾。我也許住一下這裡就會知道仁川有什麼長處。

Simplified

Impolite Form 1

Notes:

Each level in Lingodeer has a "Notes" section that precedes the actual gamified learning panels. The notes explain the grammar and relevant cultural things related to the material that will be taught in the upcoming lesson. In this section, I found that the notes were quite thorough and, blessedly, they explained that despite labeling 해체 as the "impolite" form, they do not mean to say it is actually impolite. If you are aware of how low-key angsty it makes me when someone says X form =polite and Y form=impolite, you will understand why I'm so happy about this (hint: politeness is relative to the situation!). Also, they included some small pronunciation notes on the loss of 애/에 distinction in Seoul dialect, which I found to be a nice touch.

One fault I did find in the notes—one that I have found in past reviews—is that they are peppered with little grammatical errors. Not enough to obscure the meaning of what they are trying to say, but enough that I wonder why a few simple edits were not made to clean it up a bit.

In-course:

The good and bad things that I found in the "Impolite Form 1" learning levels all apply to every other learning level.

In the learning levels, the audio files were on point, though I did not expect anything less since LingoDeer has had (imo) the cleanest audio files of any language app since it first dropped last year. There is even an option to record your own voice when you listen to new audio examples so you can play back and compare your speaking with the example. I'm still waiting for the day that they implement pronunciation-check questions like HelloChinese did, though!

Another thing I liked in the in-course sections is that, when doing sentence building with syllable tiles (if you do not choose to just manually input all of the Hangul yourself), they now have blank tiles representing spaces. This is a huge improvement to just clicking on a bunch of syllables and getting a long string of smashed-together words. Still, spacing in examples and answer displays still could be improved. Particles are still spaced away from the elements that they attach to, and the difference in spacing between attaching element+particle vs. individual elements that would typically be spaced is not large enough to be easily noticeable. I would recommend either spacing regularly spaced elements even farther apart, or better yet, spacing things normally and just coloring particles and other attaching things like the copula 이다 to show that, while they are attached to something else, they are still distinct things.

Another thing I would like to see is more variety in the sentences that you are asked to work with. Seeing an example sentence and then immediately being asked to plug in a missing part of the exact same sentence makes it feel like you see the same sentence too many times, and you could ultimately just memorize the answer instead of having to actually apply knowledge to respond properly. I think that throwing in more sentences using previously learned vocabulary would be nice. I will note that the feeling of seeing the same sentence over and over lessened as I moved through the sections, as it seemed more "unexpected" sentences were getting mixed in gradually. Still, doing that from the very beginning would be great.

Impolite Form 2

Notes:

The biggest bone I had to pick in this notes section is that it claimed that 해체 is always formed by dropping 요 from the "polite" form or 해요체, when that does not in fact always work (ex: honorific -(으)시-). This is clarified in a notes section in a later tile... but still, even though they cleared it up later, I think they should not have made such a blanket statement in the first place, especially since they had already introduced 해요체 sentences with the honorific infix. Someone who has learned those forms but is not yet familiar with -세요 becoming -셔 in해체 could very easily get into a habit of writing sentences like (X) 바쁘세 instead of (O) 바쁘셔.

In-course:

"Impolite Forms 2" is where I made the most bug reports. The previous learning section was very usable, but this one was a bit of a mess still. There were a lot of missing images, and audio would not play. This was especially a problem if you wanted to hear the new example sentences read out, and on listening questions (just had to guess the answers for those!). I trust the team will fix those bugs soon.

Concerning the actual material itself, I was more or less content except with the huge amount of particle-dropping that they jumped into. While dropping particles in Korean is very natural in speech (and especially in 해체), it feels like they went straight from using all of the particles to using literally none in some sentences. There was no mention of this natural particle-dropping in the notes, and I think that it is something that learners should be made properly aware of.

"Will" and "Suggestion"

Notes:

I liked that the information in the notes for these sections was explained in a clear and easy-to-understand way, same as for the other sections.

In-course:

The issues with audio and image loading were gone, and the smooth user experience returned! I just had a minor bone to pick, that being how they translated "심심하다" to "boring" when "bored" would be more accurate. Solid levels overall!

Tests 1 and 2

I wanted to check out some test levels because they could give me an overview of material in the levels yet to come. I was pleasantly surprised: In those first two tests, which cover 16 sections, there was a lot of useful stuff including -기 위하다, the difference between 데려오다/가다 and 가져오다/가다, obligation with -아/어야 되다/하다, reasons with -기 때문이다, honorific particles and verbs, noun modifier endings, and more. All of it is really solid material, and that plus a skim over the titles for lessons further down (up?) the tree have me convinced that there is a lot of solid intermediate information in this new release.

Verdict:

The LingoDeer Korean 2 beta is full of solid information! Only in one level did I run into any serious bugginess, and the rest of my experience was smooth, with some nice changes and additions from what I expected based on my past experience with LingoDeer. Other than bugs, the things that bugged (har har) me the most were issues with how they space particles and such in example and answer display sentences, and the lack of explanation for some things I felt really needed explanation. Overall, LingoDeer remains at the top of my recommended language apps list, and I look forward to giving the Japanese and Chinese betas test runs as well (when I have the time!).

Traditional:

大家好! 我叫好學蜜蜂。我是美國人，但我住在韓國仁川。我的母語是英文。我也會說一點法語和日語。因為我真想提高我的口語水平所以決定挑戰十一月的三十日口語挑戰。我從小對外語有很多興趣。每天下班以後學習外語。那就是我的愛好! 我也真喜歡做些甜點。謝謝你聽我的自我介紹。

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