Reader Requests - “I” and “You” 

So about a week ago, I put out a question text post asking for topics to write a lesson about. This was a feeble attempt to make this a more collaborative tumblr. And I was honestly somewhat surprised when people responded. With several different topics suggested. So I’ve decided to group these off on their own as “Reader Requests”. 

The first Reader Request is the first answer to the question submitted by then ghadah-photography, now ghadahme.

Alright. So. Grammar is not exactly my strong suit. If it was, I wouldn’t have created this tumblr to begin with. But I can help with the whole forms of “I” and “You” issue. 

So ghadahme gave a couple different characters for us to use: 나, 너, 내가, 네가, 저, and 당신. I’m going to go through these and write what in my experience I’ve used them for. 

• 나 - 나 is the most basic and common form of the word “I”. Pretty much anytime you want to translate something from English to Korean, you use 나. However, it is only when that has something only pertains to you. Just off the top of my head, thinking of examples, it’s usually used about your characteristics, like age, ethnicity, occupation, et cetera. It’s a little complicated, but if you’re stumped on what to use, this is the default. 
• 너 - 너 is the most basic form of “you”. Grammatically, it’s used under the same circumstances as 나. 

There is something that I should note here though and it may explain some of the confusion that you’ve been having with “I” and “you”. The subject is typically dropped in Korean. I believe this is called a Null Subject Language. (Anybody here who studies linguistics, please let me know if I’ve got that right.) I’ve seen this mostly used in the cases of 나 and 너. This means while you can say 나 and 너 as the subject or topic of your sentence, good grammar dictates that if it’s obvious you’re talking about “I” or “you”, you drop them. 

• 우리 - This one was not on ghadahme’s list, but is very important. The direct translation for 우리 is “our” but it is not used exclusively in that sense. For example, saying 우리 집 could either mean “our house” or “my house”. If I was talking to say my mom and said this, it would mean “our house”. If I was inviting you over, I would say this to mean “my house”. This is also applicable to people. Say I had an older brother. You’re about my age. I would say “우리 형” which would be my older brother.
• 내 - 내, not to be confused with 네 (which means “yes”, by the way), means “my”. So “My name is Alex” would start out with “내 이름은” which means “My name is”. Now, I have mentioned in a past lesson that they sound very similar, but they’re not. They actually are pronounced differently. 내 is pronounced with the top of the throat towards the front while 네 is pronounced at the bottom of the throat towards the back. Also, 가 is part of a past lesson found here. 
• 저 - 저 is really just the honorific form of 나. So anytime you use a more honorific form of speech, this becomes your default for “I”. The same rules apply grammatically for this as to 나. Actually, now that I think about it, it can also be used as “my”. So basically, 저 is used when dealing with honorifics. 
• 당신 - Google Translate’s usage of this particular form of “you” always annoyed me. Because when I was growing up, it was never really used as a form of “you”. I only heard four people use this as a kid: Mom, Dad, Grandpa, and Grandma. This is the form you use to address your loved one or spouse. It has that connotation of a married couple, so young couples don’t use it, although they could if they wanted. But if I had to group in either “I” or “you”, it’d be a “you” for sure. 

I think that about covers it. Now I know I’m prone to mistakes and oversights, as many people have told me. So if you know someone who knows the language better than me, let me know what they said was wrong. Most of the time, they’re right and I’ll post the corrections. Otherwise, hope this was an informative and helpful lesson on the various forms of “I” and “you”. If you’re looking for and actual grammar point lesson, just let me know via ask box. If you have a question about anything I’ve written here, put it in the ask box also and I’ll try to answer it as fast as I can. Until next time guys, 안녕~