Korean Past Tense

안녕하세요

In this blog we will learn how to conjugate Korean verbs into Past Tense. You might want to learn about conjugation of Korean verbs into Present tense also, for that I have already uploaded a blog, if you want you can check this The Present Tense blog>>> simply click on it.

Before getting into the tense there is something that you should know about conjugation. I have already told this thing in my previous blog but I know many of you haven’t seen it yet so I am repeating it again. Before adding any tense to a verb, we have to conjugate the verb first. For that we have to remove 다 from the dictionary form of the verb and then we get the verb stem and then we can add tense to the verb stem.

Dictionary Form	Meaning	Verb Stem
사다	to buy	사
먹다	to eat	먹
보다	to see	보

To conjugate a verb into the past tense, we have to take the verb stem and add the desired past tense ending. There are three endings of Korean Past tense.

았어요

었어요

였어요

These endings are in polite form.

When to use which ending?

àIf the verb stem ends with vowel ㅗ orㅏ, then 았어요 is added to the verb stem.

àIf the verb stem does not end with vowel ㅗ or ㅏ, then 었어요 is added to the verb stem.

àIf the verb stem ends with 하, then 였어요 is added to the verb stem.

Examples: -

--I bought clothes.

저는 옷을 샀어요.     

저는 = I

옷을 = clothes

샀어요 = bought

--I ate pizza.

저는 피자를 먹었어요.

저는 = I

피자를 = pizza

먹었어요 = ate

--I watched a movie.

저는 영화를 봤어요.

저는 = I

영화를 = movie

봤어요 = watched

That’s it for today!!! I hope this helped 😊

Try to read the Korean alphabets without looking at the Romanized versions And if you can’t read Korean alphabets yet do check my Hanguel blog 👈 click here to open it. 

Please share if you find this useful. 

Let me know if there are any mistakes and if you have any questions do ask me in the comment section.

If you are learning Korean or interested in South Korea do check my blogs👈.