Level 6 Lesson 21 / Passive Voice in Korean – Part 1Level 6 Lesson 21 / Passive Voice in Korean – Part 1
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In this lesson, we are taking a look at how to make sentences in the “Passive Voice” in Korean. This will be covered through two parts and this is Part 1 of the Passive Voice in Korean lesson. For Part 2, please check out Level 6 Lesson 23!
What is Passive Voice?
Passive voice is a form of sentence in which the focus is on the recipient of an action, rather than the subject. For example, when you *make* something, that something is *made* by you. When you recommend a book to someone, the book *is recommended* by you. That is passive voice, and the opposite of passive voice is active voice.
How to make passive voice sentences in Korean
In English, you change the verb into its “past participle” form and add it after the BE verb, but in Korean you need to conjugate the verb in the “passive voice” form by adding a suffix or a verb ending.
Listen to this lesson to find out how to conjugate a verb into the Passive Voice in Korean!
Lesson PDF in other languages (Participate in the translation!)
Discussion( leave a comment )
어머 제 머리가 너무 아파요!
I don’t really understand the purpose for passive voice!
@_@ difficult lesson indeed…
it’s really difficult…
Wow, it sounds interesting. I’m totally looking forward to this lesson! But I have to complete other levels first.
What about verbs ending in vowels? Will they be covered in part 2?
Thanks for the lesson!
I am not able to download the mp3.
It reads “Unable to download ttmik-16121.mp3 from traffic.libsyn.com.
The connection with the server was reset”.
Please assist.
Thanks
문 닫힙니다! Now it makes sense…
I wish you could come teach English in the States :)
스테파노
oops… I mean teach Korean! (your english is pretty good though… I haven’t heard the word “grammarian” in a while)
안녕하세용!
어렵 아니야. 그냥 암기해요 ㅎㅎㅎ
김사합니다
사미르
This is really a great lesson!!! ^^
감사합니다!
Guys i hope you can make more examples so we can understand a little bit more!!
감사합니다!
We couldn’t make many sentences before doing Part 2 too : ) Part 2 will have many example sentences!
I hope to find some applications in sentence (sentence examples) in the next lesson…
That will be done in the next lesson! : )
If it’s hard for you to memorize cases and exceptions, it may help to go by sounds in Korean. For “(2) 히,” instead of memorizing “ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ,” you can lump them together into the group of sounds that change if ㅎ follows them (to ㅋ, ㅌ and , ㅍ sounds–먹히다 sounds like 머키다, etc.). And so maybe our teachers have left out the rarer ㅈ would also be grouped in here. 주사 맞았다 –> 주사 맞혔다.
[Outside of "ㄱ,ㄷ,ㅂ and ㅈ" (also the top row of consonants on the keyboard excluding ㅅ and whose sounds turn conveniently enough into the bottom row of the keyboard when followed by ㅎ), none of the other consonants change when followed by ㅎ.]
And if the final consonant is ㄹ, it’s easier to slur it off with a -리 than an -이, I think. And using -기 after ㄹ just seems silly, like adding a syllable for no reason. So going by the sound helps me with that one, too.
For all vowels and -ㅎ, adding -이 also seems simpler than the other possibilities.
But the last one, -기, doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but at this point you can just get by with it as the “other” category until you get the hang of it, I suppose.^^
Let me know if that helps and if anyone has any other ways they keep track of these sorts of rules, please let me know~^^^^
흑! The example I wrote about 맞다–> 맞히다 is apparently actually not passive but causative, which has a similar set of endings but different rules, which I don’t really understand at all. ^^ But! if I had used 얹다–> 얹히다 or 꽂다–> 꽂히다 the rule would still have applied.
And then I discovered that if I’d used 찢다 it *wouldn’t* have worked, because the passive form of that verb is 찢기다. Wow! And I found an exception for ㄷ: 뜯다–>뜯기다 (not 뜯히다 like I would have expected). And I’m not quite clear on 붙이다 and how it fits into things either. So never mind. Passive’s bloomin’ tough.^^
어려운 문법부분을 자세히 설명해 주셔서 정말 감사합니다! ^^
파트 2 기대가 많이 됩니다.
Thx for the lesson. I think having sample sentences and comparing the active vs passive voice using sample sentences might make it a lot easier to understand. Hope to see those when you guys find time for it. Thx for the hard work! The double passive is kinda tricky. Does it only work for certain words?
Wow, so thorough! Thanks for this great lesson! I found the rules for which of 이, 히, 리, and 기 to use after which 받침 very helpful.
I have to disagree with you on one point, though. The double passive -아/어/여지다 may be widely used, but it’s definitely incorrect and doesn’t deserve to be recognized or taught as proper Korean, now or ever. It’s wrong for the same reason that double negatives are wrong in English: only one is required, so the second one is meaningless. Using a word meaninglessly cheapens its meaning, and that makes it harder, not easier, for everyone to understand. People who want to be sure their passive meaning comes across should take extra care to use the correct forms correctly—not twice.
Despite quibbling over that, though, I’m always grateful to you guys for the wonderful work you do. I’ve made great strides in Korean thanks to y’all. Keep it up!
Thanks for the amazing lesson! But if you don’t mind, I have a question… Does it mean that 먹히다 and 먹어지다 have the exact same meaning and usage? And how do you say, for example, “The food was eaten by me?” Thanks!
There were some example sentences spoke in the mp3 – it would’ve been nice to have them in pdf. But the explanations here were well done, I didn’t find it as difficult as I had feared. Thanks!
Questions or feedback on this lesson?
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