Permission

There is one guy who really wants to lick someone’s elbow. Because his job is elbow sommelier. However, Everybody but him speaks Korean. We need to help him to taste each person’s elbow and find the best taste elbow. But remember, everybody is Korean, we have to know how to ask permission in the Korean language.

Request Vocabularies

As many other languages do, the Korean language also has many expressions for requesting. However, there is a difference between them and the Korean language. Which is that The Korean language has special conjugations to ask permission.

The conjugation starts from the haeyo speech style. And remove the ending 요. add 도 돼요? Now we’ve learned how to ask permission in the Korean language. So, the only word we need is how to say ‘lick your elbow’.

-도 돼요?

The conjugation ‘-도 돼요?’ is very similar to ‘may I-? or ‘Can I-?’’ in English since it is a request for permission to do something. It’s really hard to distinguish if the conjugation is informal or formal. But no matter how formal it is. You can use it in both situations.

‘lick’ in the Korean language is ‘핥아요’ in the haeyo speech style. We almost got there, we just need the word ‘elbow’ in the Korean language.

돼 vs 되

되다 and 돼요 are actually a same word. For example, 됐다 is a short form 되었다. But it’s really hard to know what to use. Even native Koreans spell it often wrong. They both are pronounced the same so maybe you don’t need to know which one is correct for each sentence. But mostly, if you write 되요, it seems right lol.

Can I Lick Your Elbow?

We touched strangers’ elbows to find the name in the Korean language, We touched it, patted it and took care of it. And finally one of the elbows opened its mouth. “My name in Korean is 팔꿈치 [pal-ggumchi]!”. Now we have everything ready to ask if we can lick someone’s elbow. We tried to say the magic spell ‘팔꿈치를 핥아도 돼요?’. However, the answer that only returned was ‘NOPE, get away from me, you freak!’.

도 될까요?

Ahh, licking someone’s elbow is a quite odd request. So, maybe we need to be more polite and careful than usual. For that, we can use ‘-도 될까요?’ instead of ‘-도 돼요?’. It sounds much more polite and careful. It sounds very similar to ‘May I?’ or ‘Could I?’ but less formal than that (maybe).

We started to do the conjugation puzzle again to make the final magic spell. We started with the Haeyo speech style in the present tense. And remove the ending 요. Then, add ‘도 될까요?’

Answers for 도 돼요

At the moment you put the last conjugation puzzle together. All elbows started to glowwing while they turned into you like they were saying ‘we are ready’. One elderly elbow spoke to you with the gesture for thank you : You treated us right. you are the right one who can lick us. The elderly elbow removed the question mark from the puzzle and it became the allowing sentence.

If you remove a question mark from ‘해도 돼요?’ and ‘해도 될까요?’ then it becomes a permission like ‘you can do something’.

If you want to say ‘no you can’t’. You just simply need to add 안 before 돼요. 안 is a prefix that makes a negative sentence. However, if you want to use the full sentence, 도 is replaced to 면.

Question

But our quest didn’t end yet. We have to find the best tasty elbow. Hurry, we have to find it before elbows change their mind. Let’s go to the next tutorial! By the way, if you liked this tutorial, join us in Patreon, we are waiting for new companions!