Lesson 7 - Korean Names and Topics

In Korean, when you want to address men politely, one would use the word songsaegnim attached to their surname or full name, this literally means teacher.
For example, one would say Yoo Songsaegnim or with the full name Yoo SangHyun Songsaegnim.
It is not possible to a Korean persons first name, such like SangHyun Songsaegnim. For that same reason, when you use the ssi, you cannot say Yoo-ssi, or Yoo SangHyun-ssi, but would rather say SangHyun-ssi.

Addressing Korean women, in Korea women do not take their husbands surname when they get married.
For example if Mrs Han is married to Mr Kim, then she may referred to as Kim songsaengnim-puin (Kim mr-wife), or she maybe reffered to in a similar English terminology such as Misesu Han(Mrs Han).


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Using Copula to describe "this is that"
In Korean, if you want to describe A is B , you will have to use special verbs called copula. In Korea, this copula is present at the end of a sentence, and behaves a little differently to ordinary verbs.

If you want to say A is B(like "This is a Korean book"):-

A B-ieyo (or B-eyo)
this Korean book-ieyo

It is obvious that you would use -eyo when B ends in a vowel, but -ieyo when B ends on a consonant.

songsaengnim-ieyo (is teacher)
soju-eyo (is soju)

IMPORTANT to note that in Korean the copula is only used to describe when this "is equivalent to".
It cant be used to say "is located in"(is underneath", "is near") nor can it be used to say "is a certain way" (i.e "is red", "is happy").


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Describing how things are
Korean possess words which mean "is a certain way".
Ottaeyo means is how?, as in:
songsaengnim ottaeyo? ( How is teacher ? or What is teacher like? )
saob ottaeyo? (How is business? or What is business like?)

Kuraeyo literally means "it is like that", and may be used as a statement such as "it's like that", "thats right", "it is".
On the other hand it may be used as a question Kuraeyo? meaning "is it like that?", "really?" or "is that so?".
Korean has a special particle, used in attachment to place emphasis on what is being talked about.
by adding -un or nun, it makes As for Business or As for me.
-nun is attached to a noun, whereas -un is attached to a vowel. EG soju-nun (as for soju), Songsaengnim-un (as for teacher).