The hardest part about Korean?! 😱

1. Understanding Korean Particles: 은/는
2. Korean Slang of the Week
3. Survey: what would you like to see from us?

1. 은/는
2. 이/가
3. 을/를

🌟 P.S. The error with our example sentence is Amy’s use of ‘은' so we’ll be focusing on the particles 은 and 는 in this newsletter 🌟

• 은/는

은/는 are particles that are used following the topic of a sentence. For example, if you wanted to tell somebody that the Korean language is difficult, you would say:

 한국어는 어려워. 

(The Korean language is hard)

The particle that is used in this particular sentence is 는 and it follows the topic which is 한국어

What’s tricky, however, is that the particle 은 would not work in this sentence. To understand this better, let’s look at the sentence with the mistake: 

리즈은 게임을 좋아해

(Liz likes playing games)

The particle used in this sentence is 은 and it does follow the topic of the sentence which, in this case, is a person named 리즈. 

Here is the exact rule for when to use these two particles:  

1. 은 is used when the preceding word ends with a consonant.
2. 는 is used when the preceding word ends with a vowel.

To use the sentence about 리즈 as an example, her name ends with a vowel (ㅡ). Therefore, we can’t use the particle 은 in this sentence. But what can we do to fix this sentence? 

Simple. 😎 We change the particle to ‘는' and the correct sentence would be: 

리즈는 게임을 좋아해.

Let’s go back to the sentence about the Korean language. The particle that we used in the sentence  한국어는 어려워 is 는. This is the correct particle because the topic (한국어) ends with a vowel (ㅓ) and not a consonant. Does that make sense? 

For example 

Amy 🙎🏻‍♀️: 이 게임 꿀잼이야. This game is super fun!