🇰🇷 Lesson 7: Verbs & the Polite Present

Until now, your Korean sentences have mostly said what things are: 저는 학생이에요, 세 시예요. Today you learn to say what people do: eat, drink, go, study, like. This is the single most useful pattern in beginner Korean. The polite present ending -아요/-어요 is what you'll hear in shops, cafés, classrooms and K-dramas all day long.

Here's the good news: Korean verbs don't change for person or number. "I eat", "you eat", "she eats", "they eat" are all 먹어요. Once you can build one form, you can talk about anyone.

🧠 The Mental Model: Dictionary Form → Stem → Ending

Every Korean verb in a dictionary ends in -다. That 다 is just a label meaning "this is a verb", a bit like the "to" in "to eat". To use the verb, you:

1. Take the dictionary form: 먹다 (to eat)
2. Remove 다 to find the stem: 먹
3. Add an ending: 먹 + 어요 → 먹어요 (eat / eats)

Think of the stem as the engine and the ending as the gear. Later lessons swap in new gears (past tense, "want to", "can"), but the engine stays the same. So the skill you practise today, finding the stem and attaching an ending, is one you'll use in every lesson from here on.

🎨 Vowel Harmony: 아요, 어요 or 해요?

Which ending you add depends on the last vowel of the stem. Korean likes "bright" vowels (ㅏ, ㅗ) to pair with bright vowels, and everything else to pair with the "dark" vowel ㅓ. This is called vowel harmony.

Stems ending in a consonant: just attach

When the stem ends in a 받침, nothing merges. You simply add 아요 or 어요, and the consonant slides over into the next syllable when you speak (Lesson 3's linking rule).

Recognise 있어요 and 없어요 from Lesson 5? Now you can see they were ordinary verbs all along.

하다 verbs: the easy family

하다 ("to do") becomes 해요, and so does every verb built on it. Korean makes hundreds of verbs by adding 하다 to a noun: 공부 (study) + 하다, 운동 (exercise) + 하다, 요리 (cooking) + 하다. That means one rule unlocks a huge chunk of the vocabulary.

🔀 Contractions: When Vowels Meet

When the stem ends in a vowel, adding 아요/어요 creates two vowels in a row, and Korean squeezes them together, just as English turns "do not" into "don't". These contractions aren't optional extras; they're the normal spoken and written forms. There are only a handful of patterns to learn.

📦 The Object Marker 을 / 를

In Lesson 5 you met the topic marker (은/는) and the subject marker (이/가). The third big label is the object marker, which tags the thing that receives the action: the coffee you drink, the book you read. Because Korean puts the verb last, the object comes before the verb: "I coffee drink".

Notice that one form, 먹어요, covers "I eat" (habit), "I'm eating" (right now) and even "I'll eat" (very near future, from context). Korean's present tense is broad, so let context do the work.

🌈 Adjectives Are Verbs Too

This surprises almost every English speaker: in Korean, adjectives like "expensive", "tired" or "delicious" are descriptive verbs. They have dictionary forms ending in 다 and conjugate with exactly the same rules. The "is" is already built in.

Descriptive verbs never take 을/를, because nothing is being "done to" anything. Their subject takes 이/가 (or 은/는 for a topic or contrast).

📋 Your Core 20

Here are twenty high-frequency verbs and adjectives, all regular, to drill until they feel automatic.

💬 Dialogue: At the Café

Spot the grammar: 마셔요 (ㅣ + 어 → ㅕ), 배워요 (ㅜ + 어 → ㅝ), 공부해요 (하다), 한국어를 and 커피를 (object, no 받침), 숙제가 많아요 (descriptive verb with a subject), and 사요 used for "I'll buy" right now. Also notice 뭐 마셔요? drops the object marker: in casual questions 뭐를 usually shrinks to just 뭐.

🌏 Cultural Note — 밥 먹었어요? 밥 means "cooked rice", but it also means "a meal" in general, because rice is at the heart of Korean eating. That's why 밥을 먹어요 simply means "I eat (a meal)". Koreans even greet friends with "Have you eaten?" (밥 먹었어요?), a warm check-in rather than a literal question. You'll learn that past-tense ending in Lesson 15, but you can already recognise 밥 and 먹 inside it.

If a verb ever refuses to follow these rules (듣다 → 들어요, 덥다 → 더워요), it isn't you making a mistake; it's one of Korean's irregular verbs, and they get their own lesson later. For now, every verb in this lesson plays fair.

✏️ Practice

🧠 Check Your Understanding

❓ Common Questions

🔮 Looking Ahead

In Lesson 8: Family & Personal Descriptions, you'll put your new verbs and adjectives to work describing the people in your life: 우리 언니는 키가 커요, 아버지는 요리를 좋아해요. You'll combine everything so far (이에요, 은/는, 이/가, 을/를 and the polite present) in real conversations about family.