Korean Verb with Consonant Base..

Sometimes its confusing when you tried to look for a certain word in the Korean dictionary to find the meaning because the word in the dictionary isn’t exactly the same with what you’re looking for. I for one had troubles understanding why most of the words are a bit different in dictionary compare to the ones I’ve used in sentences. (the spelling was different).

For example.

앉아  means ‘sleep’ when used in a sentence. (sentence form/infinitive form is ‘앉아’).

But when you try to find the word in the dictionary, you find ‘앉다’ instead of ’앉아’.

Another example.

입어(infinitive form) means ‘wears/put on’. In dictionary form  its ‘입다’.

This is because Korean dictionary list verbs in a special ‘dictionary form’ or citation form with one shape ending  ‘–다’.

So, what does this have to do with the entry title? ‘Korean Verb with Consonant Base’????

Well it is crucial to have the clear understanding of whether the Korean verb that you’re looking in the dictionary is a consonant base or a vowel base in order to change it from dictionary form into infinitive form and use it in a sentence later on.

We’re just going to look into Verb with consonant Base first.. I’ll explain the Vowel base in our next entry.

So lets begin!!

First you have to know.

-          Consonant-base verb is Korean verb with a ‘consonant’ (ㅂ,ㅈ,ㄷ,ㄱ,ㅅ,ㄴ,ㅁ etc.) ending.

-          Consonant-base verb typically have infinitive ending ‘-어’.

-        However if the last vowel of the consonant base is ‘오’ or ‘아’ then the infinitive ending is ‘-아’ instead of ‘-어’.

Confusing? Well, of course! Let’s look at the examples.

Hope that is clear. Well, next time well look at vowel base infinitives. Its more confusing than this one : ). Have fun with Hangul!!!

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