What Are You Doing? (을/를 해요)

Every verb you’ve met so far, 이다, 아니다, 있다, has been describing a state. This lesson is the first one with actual verbs: eating, drinking, watching, reading. They follow the same shape you already know (polite -아요/-어요, formal -ㅂ니다/-습니다, casual bare stem) and the object of the sentence just needs 을 or 를 stuck to the end, 을 after a consonant, 를 after a vowel, so you always know which noun is being acted on.

Picking -아요 or -어요 isn’t random either: it comes down to the last vowel in the verb stem. If that vowel is ㅏ or ㅗ, attach -아요. Every other vowel takes -어요. That’s why 먹다 (stem 먹, vowel ㅓ) becomes 먹어요, while a stem like 오 (in 오다, to come) would take -아요. A handful of verbs bend the rule further: ㅂ-stems like 어렵다 (difficult) become 어려워요, not 어려아요, and 르-stems like 빠르다 (fast) double up into 빨라요. You’ll meet more of these as you go.

Eating and Drinking

Watching, Reading, Listening

Three of these verbs are irregular in a way that only shows up when the ending starts with a consonant, not a vowel. 듣다 (to listen) turns its ㄷ into ㄹ before a vowel, so 들어요 in the polite form but 듣습니다 in the formal one, since -습니다 starts with a consonant and never triggers the change.

Meeting, Making, Studying

Vocabulary