Negative Sentences There are two ways you can make a sentence negative: 1. By adding 안 (acting as an adverb in the sentence) before a verb/adjective 2. By adding ~지 않다 to the stem of a verb/adjective. 않다 then becomes the verb/adjective in that sentence and must be conjugated accordingly. Both have the exact same meaning. When I first learned these, I asking a Korean teacher “how do I know when to use one or the other?” His answer: “It is totally up to the speaker.” After saying that, however, he did say that he thinks ~하지 않다 is usually connected to words ending in 하다 (there are a lot) whereas 안 is added to the sentence when the verb/adjective just ends in 다. But don’t pay much attention that that: they are exactly the same. For example: 저는 안 공부했어요 = I didn’t study, or 저는 공부하지 않았어요 = I didn’t study More Examples: 저는 안 행복해요 = I’m not happy 저는 행복하지 않아요 = I’m not happy 저는 내일 학교에 안 가겠어요 = I’m not going to school tomorrow 저는 내일 학교에 가지 않겠어요 = I’m not going to school tomorrow 저는 생선을 안 좋아해요 = I don’t like fish 저는 생선을 좋아하지 않아요 = I don’t like fish 그 여자는 안 예뻐요 = That girl isn’t pretty 그 여자는 예쁘지 않아요 = That girl isn’t pretty I have had people ask me about the word order of sentences using an adverb and the negative adverb “안”. One learner asked me if this sentence would be okay: 저는 빨리 안 공부했어요 While it might be understood, this sentence sounds very awkward in Korean. The reason is probably due to the fact that there are two adverbs being used. In this sentence, both “빨리” and “안” act as adverbs that indicate the degree to which the studying was done. As I mentioned earlier, this usually isn’t done in Korean. Instead, if you wanted to express that meaning, you can use the ~지않다 negative addition instead. By doing this, you effectively remove one of the adverbs and are left with: 저는 빨리 공부하지 않았어요 = I didn’t study quickly Even still, though. This sentence could still be a little awkward in Korean – because when would you ever say “I didn’t study quickly”? In most cases, it would be more natural to simply use an adverb that has the opposite meaning. For example, this sentence: 저는 밥을 빨리 먹지 않았어요 = I didn’t eat (rice) quickly Would be more naturally said as: 저는 밥을 천천히 먹었어요 = I ate rice slowly
Posted on: Sun, 23 Nov 2014 07:29:35 +0000
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