Verb last: 을/를 and your first action sentences

Five action words

Play each one: 먹어요 eat, 마셔요 drink, 봐요 watch or see, 공부해요 study, 좋아해요 like. They all end in 요, which makes them polite.

Learn them as whole words for now; how they are built comes in unit 4. Two things are different from English. The form never changes with the person: 마셔요 is “I drink”, “you drink” and “she drinks”. And each word alone is already a complete polite sentence.

먹어요 is said [머거요] by linking. 좋아해요 is said [조아해요]: the ㅎ at the bottom is silent here.

Thing first, action last

Read the two sentences. 밥을 먹어요 is “rice eat”. 영화를 봐요 is “film watch”. English puts the action before the thing: eat rice. Korean puts the thing first and the action at the very end of the sentence, every time.

Nothing here says “I”, and both sentences are complete all the same. Now look at the end of each noun. There is a small piece glued on: 을 after 밥, and 를 after 영화. The next step explains it.

The object marker: 을 / 를

That piece is a particle, like 은 / 는 and 이 / 가. It marks the thing the action is done to: what is eaten, watched, studied or liked. Grammar books call this the object.

The form follows the pattern you know. After a final consonant it is 을, and it links: 음악을 is said 으마글. After a vowel it is 를: 한국어를, 영화를. English shows the object by putting it after the verb. Korean tags it instead.

The tags carry the meaning, not the position

A full sentence has three parts: 저는 (as for me), 커피를 (coffee, the thing acted on), 마셔요 (drink). “I drink coffee.”

Now read the second sentence. The first two parts have changed places, and it still means “I drink coffee”. That is possible because 는 and 를 say who does what. English would turn into nonsense if you swapped the words. The first order is the normal, neutral one. What cannot move is the verb: it stays last.

Leaving out “I”

These two sentences mean the same thing. The second has no 저는. Korean leaves out whatever is clear from the situation, and when you are talking about yourself, “I” usually is.

The short version is not sloppy and it is not an abbreviation. In conversation it is the more usual of the two. Saying 저는 in every sentence sounds as if you keep insisting “me, I …”. Put it in when you start talking about yourself or when there is a contrast with someone else.