Korean Full Course

You may have already noticed in this lesson that most sentences end with some interesting sounds like "mnida" or "simnida".

-ㅂ니다 / -습니다 and -입니다 are sentence endings. -ㅂ니다 / -습니다 are used with verbs (to go, to eat) and adjectives (kind, beautiful).
-입니다 is used with nouns (book, water) and pronouns (I, you, they).

Sentence endings are used to indicate the type of sentence and/or style of speech. As the types of sentences and speech styles vary, there are also multiple sentence endings.

"-ㅂ니다 / -습니다, -ㅂ니까 / -습니까, -십시오 / -으십시오, -ㅂ시다 / -읍시다" are polite formal sentence endings. In polite informal and casual styles, the sentence endings for each type of sentence are different.

Don't get discouraged, we will study each ending closely in future lessons. Right now, I'm only showing you the whole picture to help you understand Korean language.

Since you're just starting out learning Korean, it's a good idea to start with polite formal endings so you don't accidentally offend someone by using, for example, casual style.

In Korean dramas, especially youth ones, the casual style is most often used, as the action takes place between a guy and a girl, close friends, family members, and classmates. But you should not use casual style with strangers, older people, or people who have higher social status than you. It's very rude and arrogant. You don't want to be one of those people, do you?
For this reason, we will start this course with the polite formal style and then gradually move towards the polite informal and casual styles.