In Korea, people really care about the status of the person they're talking to and, to make a good first impression, you'll have to adapt the formality of your language to their social position.

Don't worry, though, because you'll be learning the passe-partout expressions that will always be right on every occasion in this lesson.

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• 안녕하세요

When you first meet a person, it's good to greet them. Before introducing yourself, therefore, you'll say "안녕하세요", which means "Hello" or "Good morning". You can also use it when meeting somebody in the evening because its actual meaning is "be at peace" (안녕 literally means "peace"). However, if you're already friends with your interlocutor, you may hear the shortened version "안녕", which is more informal (the honorific is dropped) and should only be used with close people.​

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• 어떻게 지내요?

After the greetings, you may wanna ask how your interlocutor is. "어떻게 지내요?" means "how are you" and it's composed by 어떻게, which means "how", and 지내요, which means "spend your time". So, literally, it means "how are you spending your time?".

There are three ways you can communicate to other people how you're doing.

1. 잘 지내요, I'm fine (잘 means "good", "fine")

2. 그저 그렇게 지내요, I'm so so

3. 잘 못 지내요, I'm not fine

In the end, you may wanna say "thank you for asking" and ask back, so you will say "물어봐 줘서 고마워요, 너는?"

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• 밥 먹었어요?

According to tradition, Koreans may ask how you are by saying "밥 먹었어요?". It actually means "have you eaten rice?", but you won't really have to answer if you've eaten rice or even eaten at all. You can quickly reply with "yes" or "no" and move on with the conversation.

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• 네/아니요

네 and 아니요​ are the Korean for "yes" and "no". These two words are used in the same way as in English when the question is affirmative, but they are different if used with a negative question.
If someone asks you "커피를 좋아하지 않아요?" ("don't you like coffee?") and you want to say that you don't like it, you'll use "네". Instead, if you do like coffee, you'll use "아니요", because you're denying that affirmation.

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• 안녕히 가세요/안녕히 계세요

Once the conversation is over, you'll have to ways to leave the interlocutor basing on where you're going. If you're staying in the place the conversation took place in and the other person and going away, you'll say "안녕히 가세요" (which literally means "go in peace"). If it's the opposite and you're going away leaving the interlocutor in the place you talked, then you'll say "안녕히 계세요" (which literally means "stay/remain in peace").

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Present tense of the verb "to be"

The verb to be in Korean is 이다 and, in the present tense, it can be conjugated in two different ways depending on the last letter of the word it is attached to.

If a word ends in a consonant, you will attach -이에요 at the end of it; if it finishes in a vocal, you will attach -예요. This is the only possible distinction because Korean doesn't make any differences between singular and plural.

Examples:

It's water → 물이에요

It's a book → 책이에요

It's a dog → 개예요

It's me → 나예요

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Korean is an agglutinative language. In other words, every word is accompanied by a postposition that defines its logical function. Koreans, though, remove every part of the sentence when it's understandable by the context, subjects included. A phrase like "책이에요", therefore, would obviously mean "it's a book" and not "I'm a book" or "you're a book" even if the subject "it" is not specified.

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You can find a downloadable PDF file to review this lesson offline and a Google Forms test to exercise and verify what you learned here below. See you at the next lesson!