Grammar Question: (Infinitive)는 것을

한국어 공개포럼 (Open Forum in Korean)
1

Hey y’all! I was wondering if anyone would have some insight to this grammar quandry that ChatGPT was unable to explain to me :joy: This is a sentence I asked it to translate into Korean, and then because I wanted to understand what was going on, I asked it to break it down for me:

제가 녹음 파일의 단어와 수정된 텍스트의 단어가 다르다는 것을 알아챘어요.

The part that I don’t quite understand is why it is “다르다는 것을” and not “다르는 것을” or “다른 것을”. In my convo with chat gpt, I got about as far as understanding that it was related to the verb that followed, “알아챘어요”. However, it wasn’t able to provide any other examples with different verbs. (It tried, but in all other examples, the ‘다’ was removed)

Edit: For example “실수한 것을 깨닫다” and “노력한 것이 인정받다”, both of which make more sense to me, which was why I was so curious about why the infinitive was used in my sentence’s case.

Is this an isolated grammar rule where only “알아챘어요”, calls for “(infinitive)는 것을”? Or is this part of a bigger pattern where more verbs will call for “(infinitive)는 것을”?

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Hi there,

You are being thrown off by the “~다는…” part, right? It used to throw me quite a bit too. This is a way of making a kind of quotation out of the previous verb. In other words, you could say something like ‘문법이 쉽다는 언어를 배워요!’ → ‘Learn a language which (they say/it is said) has easy grammar!’. Or, ‘오늘의 날씨가 덥다는 얘기를 들었어요’ → ‘I heard somebody say today’s weather is hot.’ This “다는” or “는다는” functions like a contracted version of “~다고 하는”.

When ‘다는 것…’ also comes in, it often makes some contrast with the verb form in the first part of the phrase. So for example, when an unintended outcome happens, or something contradictory to original motivation was done. Like:

쉽게 설명한다는 것이 잘못해서 어려워졌습니다.
I intended to give a simple explanation, but didn’t do it right, so the explanation became difficult. :slight_smile:

An explanation in Korean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsbpdAqTRYI
Another: A-다는 N, V-ㄴ/는다는 N Korean grammar

A decent one in English: V~ ㄴ/는 다는 것 [Korean Grammar] | TOPIK GUIDE