Hopefully you’ve had some time to think about the ㄹ ending verbs in detail (published on September 14th 2009). I’m going to go even further and show you how to conjugate these verbs in the deferential polite form.

In the first post on ㄹ ending verbs, the verb 놀다 was conjugated as 놀아요 in the standard polite form. Before we move on to the deferential polite form I just want to point out some pronunciation discrepancies in the standard polite form. Although 놀아요 is spelled as “nolayo”, it’s actually pronounced as “norayo”. So the way you should pronounce 놀아요 is by saying it as 노라요. The same goes for 알아요. It’s pronounced as 아라요. Just remember that the correct spelling is 알아요, but the way you pronounce it “arayo”. With 만들다 you should pronounce it as 만드러요, or “manduroyo”, even though it’s spelled as 만들어요.

Now in the deferential polite, a verb like 알다 is going to be 압니다. The ㄹ is taken off and ㅂ is attached in place of the ㄹ. After the ㄹ, 니다 is attached. So with 놀다 it’ll be 놉니다. Again, remove the ㄹ, and attach ㅂin place of the ㄹ and add 니다 after the ㄹ. Can you guess how to change 만들다 in the deferential polite form? It’s going to be 만듭니다. When these verbs are used in the spoken form in everyday speech, it’ll sound a little different from the way it’s spelled. 압니다 will sound like 암니다 when said quickly. So instead of the “p” sound in 압니다 (the bottom character ㅂ) it’ll sound like an “m” sound (ㅁ) in 암니다.

The thing you have to remember here is that the correct spelling is with the ㅂ in 압니다. Again the same “m” sound appears in 만듭니다 (만듬니다) and 놉니다 (놈니다). In other words, it’s going to be spelled as “mandupnida” (만듭니다) but pronounced as “mandupnida” (만듬니다). Although this may seem confusing right now, you’ll soon see that these pronunciation changes are much easier than reading the actual word as it is. Not to get linguistically technical, but it’s quite difficult to end a sound in a “p” and soon after make an “n” sound, and so instead of a “p” there’s a tendency to make an “m” sound instead.

I think I’ll do another post on ㄹ ending verbs, but this time, it’ll be more of an exercise and it’ll incorporate some old grammar points we went over. Until then, 다음에 또 봐요! (See you again next time!)