Posts tagged with "directional particles"

Today I’ll teach you how to say ‘from ___ to ____’. All you have to do is learn the particles that mean ‘from’ and ‘to’ in Korean, and insert whatever location or place in the blanks.

As an example, let’s pick two locations: Seoul and Jejudo. Let’s first learn how to say, ‘from Seoul’. In Korean this is, Seoul ehso (서울에서). Therefore the particle for ‘from’ is ehso (에서).

Then let’s learn how to say ‘to Jejudo’. Before I begin, I just want to tell you that if you translate this literally in English, it’s more like ‘until Jejudo’. So the particle we want to focus on is kkaji (까지). To/until Jejudo = Jejudo kkaji (제주도까지).

Altogether the sentence, ‘from Seoul to/until Jejudo’ is Seoul ehso Jejudo kkaji (서울에서 제주도까지).

I’ll provide another example. How do you say, ‘from Busan to/until Ulsan’? This would be: Busan ehso Ulsan kkaji (부산에서 울산까지).

Let’s make a full sentence from these two examples. How would you say, ‘I drive from Busan to Ulsan’? Before I tell you the answer, let’s figure out what we need here. We’ll need the verb ‘to drive’ which is unjunhada (운전하다). Let’s assume this is in the deferential polite. So, it’ll be conjugated as unjunhamnida (운전합니다). If you’re still confused about forming the deferential polite, take a look at the last couple of posts before this post.

Altogether the sentence ‘I drive from Busan to Ulsan’ is busan ehso ulsan kkaji unjunhamnida (부신에서 울산까지 운전합니다).

On March eleventh and March fifteenth, I did a post on directional particles. I’ll do a little review of those posts in this post. If you want, you can look back at those posts and read them for more depth into the directional particles.

The post on March eleventh talked about using uro (으로) and ro (). Uro (으로)/ro () is a particle used to indicate a general direction or location. In English, it’s like saying ‘towards …’. For example, let’s say you want to say ‘I go towards the school.’ You would need a directional particle to indicate ‘towards’ in the sentence. The particles for ‘towards’ is uro (으로) and ro (). However, whether you use uro (으로) or ro () depends on whether the location or noun ends in a consonant or vowel. In this case, the noun is school, which is hakgyo (학교). Hakgyo (학교) ends in a vowel, so the particle used here will be ro ().

The sentence ‘I go towards the school’ will need a verb meaning ‘to go’. In Korean this is gada (가다). To conjugate this verb in the present tense, drop the da (), and you’re left with the stem ga (). Let’s conjugate this in the standard polite level. The verb gada (가다) will be gayo (가요) in the standard polite level. Therefore the sentence ‘I go towards the school’ will be hakgyo ro gayo (학교로 가요). The ‘I’ is implied in Korean. In Korean, a subject of a sentence can be dropped. This is especially true in conversational settings when it’s obvious that the speaker is referring to himself/herself.

Now to say ‘I go towards the school’ in the deferential polite, it will be hakgyo ro gamnida (학교로 갑니다). Here, the verb ‘to go’ will be conjugated differently from the standard polite form. The da () will be dropped from ‘gada’ and the stem ga () will be left over. Now, since gada (가다) ends in a vowel, you’ll just add ㅂ니다 to the stem. So the entire verb will look like this: kamnida (갑니다). The problem is, the biup () will sound more like a mium () because the following niun () will make it difficult to pronounce the word with a ‘b’ sound.

Now let’s use a noun that ends in a consonant. Gyoshil (교실) ends in a consonant, so you’ll have to use the uro (으로) particle, right? No, the reason is because gyoshil (교실) ends in a riul (). Riul () is a consonant, but you’ll still you ro (). Don’t worry, this is the only exception where a consonant will use ro (). So the sentence ‘I go towards the classroom’ will be gyoshil ro gayo (교실로 가요) in the standard polite. Note that gyoshil (교실) means classroom. Now let’s use the example of samushil (사무실). Samushil means office. What will you use, ro () or uro (으로)? You’ll use ro () because samushil (사무실) ends in a riul (), which is the only consonant that uses ro ().

I think now’s a good time to go over directional particles.  Let’s look at the particle ro () and uro (으로).  If I want to say, “towards the school” all I have to do is add the ro () particle to the noun “school”.  The noun for school in Korean is hakkyo (학교).  Add ro () to hakkyo (학교) and you get hakkyoro (학교로).  Whenever you add ro () or uro (으로) to a noun, it means “towards the _____”.  For example the noun for “class” is suop (수업).  The phrase “towards the class” is suopuro (수업으로). 

Unlike English, Korean does not have a “the” or “a” particle.  In sophisticated English terms, the Korean language does not have an indefinite and definite article.  This is good, because that means you don’t have to worry about it!  Another thing to keep in mind is that depending on whether the last character is a consonant or vowel, you’ll use uro (으로) or ro () accordingly.  If the noun ends in a vowel you have to use ro ().  When it ends in a consonant you use uro (으로). 

The only exception is the consonant .  When the noun ends in such as the word kyoshil (교실), you add ro ().  Kyoshil (교실) means “classroom” in Korean.  Even though is a consonant, it’s a special case so you would use the ro () ending.  The reason for why is a special case has to do with phonetics.  If you want to say “towards the classroom” and add the uro (으로) ending, it would be hard to pronounce.  It’s much easier to pronounce “towards the classroom” with the ro () ending.  Try it for yourself: kyoshilro (교실로) versus kyoshiluro (교실으로).

Alright folks, that’s it for today!

Back to the Top