Resource for Korean suffixes?

Does anyone have a good resource for learning Korean verb suffixes and other things(?) that show up at the ends of sentences?

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All the best and most complete resources are entirely in Korean, which may not be ideal if you are a beginner.

You could check out Korean Grammar in Use by Darakwon. It is divided into 3 different levels (Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced). It explains quite a few of these verb endings and particles, but doesn’t cover them all by any means as there are thousands of them. I am not even kidding. My Korean dictionary of verb endings and particles has over a thousand pages with 3 or 4 of these per page.

Some of these forms are very obscure though and you have more chances of seeing men from Mars landing in your back garden than you have of ever encountering them in a text, which means you absolutely don’t need and shouldn’t even try to memorise them.

What you should be focusing on is reading and listening as much as you can. When you see an unknown ending, look it up and write a short explanatory note. In time, you will see that the most frequent ones keep appearing and you will be able to recognise them and know what they mean.

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Making note of it! Thanks!

There’s such a thing? Does it have a name? Where can I get one?

It is called 어미.조사 사전.

There are three different versions of this book. I have the yellow one made for Korean teachers. I don’t teach Korean, but it is the most complete resource you’ll ever find. The other two are abridged versions.

I bought it at a Korean bookstore and the shipping was just crazy expensive. I think I forked over 100 dollars to have it shipped to the UK. That was roughly 5 years ago, so it’s likely to cost even more now.

There is an ebook version available, but it’s just a cra**y PDF version, so no highlighting possible.

I am not quite sure the hardback version is still available given that this was published years ago in 2006, but if you’re lucky you might still be able to find it.


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Found the Grammar books you mentioned!

Found the particles dictionary too! The dictionary looks amazing, although it’s a bit too advanced for me at the moment (entirely in Korean!) but I hope to get there.

Meanwhile, I’ll start with this page, as it looks helpful for starters…Link: Daldal Korean compound particles

The Korean Grammar in Use books are ideal to start with and you will find them very useful. I still go back to them now and again. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Have acquired, shall use, thanks again!

Talk to me In Korean is also an excellent resource, too!

Their website just recently switched over to a paid only platform, but they have lots of free videos on their YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@talktomeinkorean/videos

These two might be particularly helpful (off the top):

Note: It has a really good explainer about the difference between the English Language and Korean.

Note: This video specifically explains some of the challenges of Korean sentences.

Edit: I found this today! The free video clip (included in this paid lesson page) goes through how basic Korean sentences are structured:

  • Common word order
  • How adjectives in Korean conjugate like verbs
  • Omitting parts

Link: https://talktomeinkorean.com/curriculum/how-korean-sentences-work/comment-page-2/ (at time stamp 03:17)

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Perfect! Actually I learned a lot that immediately answers some of my confusion, just from these two videos. “Learning Korean is like playing a guessing game.” So true! :slight_smile:

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Glad it helps! :smiley: They helped me a lot too, when I started getting into learning Korean words in context.

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I agree with SeoulMate. As I’m sure you know, all Korean language learning textbooks introduce a few of these grammar patterns (whether verb endings, conjuctions, etc.) per chapter. However, a lot of them are geared toward a specific kind of academic/‘Korean test’-style Korean which might not be immediately useful to you if your goal is to converse, make friends, and/or understand entertainment media.

I’m also not aware of an English language compendium of them all. In addition to the hundreds and hundreds in use, there are also hundreds falling out of use or already archaic. I agree with the advice that you will encounter most of the common ones repeating a lot, and anything you see often and don’t understand, you can often find by just google searching the verb ending. Most of the time there will be multiple English explanations on a site somewhere; for the really rare ones you can just use the Korean language website and auto-translate in your browser.

This is pretty high level but the National Language Center has a website where Koreans often ask questions they are not clear about in their own grammar… (for example, the difference between ~는 바람에 and ~는 탓에)… sometimes I find answers to tricky stuff here. https://www.korean.go.kr/front/search/searchAllList.do

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Hmm… You both have been seriously helpful with some of your other suggestions; Google searching the word ending doesn’t really work, for me. Maybe my search method is wrong, but I end up with thousands of Korean-language websites which happen to use that ending somewhere on their pages without any explanation… Any suggestions on how to do a Google search for a word ending that will actually turn up useful results? For example, 함께해 or 함께 지네?

Oops, should have been clearer about that! I have good luck searching the word ending followed by “문법” (grammar) for Korean results and just “grammar” or “Korean” in English for English results.

For example, let’s say I encountered the phrase “…하기 마련이예요.” and I don’t understand this ending on 하다. I search like this and voila!

(Also, in your example, you probably mean “함께 지내”! 함께 is to do something together, and 지내다 is to live, pass time, stay, go on with life, etc. The 다 verb ending is dropped in “반말” (half speech) casual speech form. 함께 지내(다) means to live life together.)

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Ok, I tried and it works. Thanks again!