Adverbs

Adverbs may not be necessary for speech but it always makes our speech more clear and richer. ‘She smiles at me’, ‘ She beautifully smiles at me’. Just like this. Just one adverb can make a sentence richer. That’s adverbs. In English, mostly you can make adverbs by adding ‘ly’. Then how do we make adverbs in the Korean language?

i Adverbs In Korean Language

Interestingly, You can still use ‘ly’ to make adverbs in the Korean language. But not only ‘li’, ‘i’ and ‘hi’ are also used. Too many? Then remember that the ‘i’ vowel at the end makes adverbs.

빨리 움직여요
Move fast

신중히 골라요
Pick one carefully

편히 있어요
Stay comfortably
= Make yourself comfortable

isn’t it interesting? The Korean language and English are completely different, yet they use a similar method to make adverbs. -이 Adverbs use a word stem to make an adverb. So, if you learn new verbs, then you can use them right away as an adverb. 하(ha) in 하다 verb becomes 히 (hi) by combining 이. if the word stem has ㄹ, then 이 duplicate it.

Exceptions

However, you can not make every adjective into adverbs in this way. And some of them are adverbs from the first place like 천천히. They don’t use the word root even though they look like it

Position of Adverbs

Korean adverbs are always placed before a verb. Actually it doesn’t really matter if you position it anyplace before a verb. But the best natural position is right before a verb.

빨리 움직여요
Move fast

ge Adverbs In Korean Language

Another suffix is  ‘-게’. Remove the ending ‘다’ and add ‘게’. ‘-게’ suffix changes the adjectives to adverbs such as smartly, fastly, warmly just like ‘ly’ does. Unlike ‘li’, you can change any adjectives into adverbs in this way.

-이 adverbs and -게 adverb use same word stems but it makes no big difference normally. Of course, sometimes it has a different meaning but mostly they mean the same thing. It’s easier to make more than -이 adverb. You just need to replace 다 of word stems to 게.

빠르게 움직여요
Move fast

신중하게 골라요
Pick one carefully

편하게 있어요
Stay comfortably
= Make yourself comfortable

Some Stems can’t be used with -게 or -히

Some word stems can’t be used with -게 and some can’t be used with -히. There are no rules for them. You just need to memorize them.

Adverbs in Korean Language

Some Korean adverbs don’t use any word as a basis. I can’t make a list of all adverbs but you have to understand there are many adverbs that don’t use any word stem.

Other adverbs’ basic forms need and use a word stem but this type doesn’t. It exists as an adverb from the first place. There is no rule for them. You just need to memorize them one by one.

-으로 Adverbs

으로 means ‘in some way’. Actually it’s a postposition, not an adverb but it becomes an adverb when you translate Korean into English. Most of stems for 으로 adverbs uses suffix 적.

과학적으로 해결해보세요
Solve it scientifically

무의식적으로 버튼을 눌렀어요
I pressed the button unconsciously

본능적으로 움직였어요
I moved my body instinctively

What Is the Difference Between ‘i’ and ‘ge’?

Grammatically, i adverbs and ge adverbs shouldn’t have any difference except how they are made or you can make only ge adverbs with some words. But, as a Korean, I always felt a lot of differences in the nuance between them.

산이 멀리 보인다
The mountain seems far / I see the mountain in the far distance

산이 멀게 보인다
it looks far (than it actually is)

For example, 산이 멀게 보인다 sounds like ‘woah, it looks far than it actually is’. It somehow contains the nuance of how I feel.

Questions

Now we learned how to make adverbs from dictionary forms. But it seems like it’s still not enough to make a simple sentence. Why don’t we learn possessives at the next tutorial? It’s simple but powerful enough to make your sentence rich. If you enjoyed this tutorial, join us in Patreon! We are waiting for you there!