"책은 의미가 없습니다."
Translation:Books are meaningless.
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이/가 is the subject marker; 은/는 is the topic marker. If a word ends in a vowel (ㅏ, ㅑ, ㅐ, ㅒ, ㅓ, ㅕ, ㅔ, ㅖ, ㅗ, ㅛ, ㅜ, ㅠ, ㅡ, ㅣ; eg. 고양이) it will be 는/가; if it ends in a consonant (eg. 동물) it will be 은/이. I do suggest finding a website that helps you understand it better, it is a bit hard for me to explain :)
Well i think they are subject particle because I am a beginner so I don't know that much but these are subject particles or object particles you can see seemile korea class playlist in YouTube ok ,, actually after all am learning from 1,2 weeks I didn't get what is written i can read hangul but slowly like i have to think what was that word , it looks easy to learn new language but it is really hard ,
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의미 is just "meaning", 가 is a topic marking particle, so it indicates, that in this sentence the word "meaning" is a topic
then 의미가 없습니다 means something like "there is no meaning" therefore "meaningless"
and if it was 의미가 있습니다 it would mean "meaningful"
hope I explained it well :)
Here's some info for particles like 가:
Think of 가 and 이 as being used to bring in new information, and 은/는 being used to connect what's already known to the new information.
In this sentence: 남자는 메시지가 있습니다 (The man has a message), you probably would've already known about the man with past context.
Maybe you're sitting in your office and your secretary comes in. "There's a man outside wanting to see you." They say. There would've likely been a 가 attached to the man, since it's new information that he exists.
"What does he want?" You reply.
"He (the man) has a message./남자는 메시지가 있습니다." The secretary replies. You already know about the man. He's not new information. What's new information is the message. So, 'message' is the item that will have 가 attached to it, putting more emphasis on it than the man. The man will just have 는 attached to it to attach it to the next word.
I learned this concept from Japanese, and from what I've seen so far, it seems to be the same in Korean. I never understood it when people just said "as for (item), etc. etc." when explaining は, which in Korean is 은/는, and it seems that sentence is popping up here too. I didn't even know what that meant! As for the man? How does "as for..." tell me when to use は or が (은/는 or 가/이)?
I feel like a better way to explain it would be "as for (object), which you already know about +은/는, this is what's new that exists +가/이."
So, to connect that back to the original sentence 남자는 메시지가 있습니다, it'd be like this:
"As for the man (which you already knew about, so you'd use 는 with him), he has a message (using 가 since this is new information, so it gets more emphasis)."
Of course, if you're introducing the man and the message in the same sentence, you'll just put 가/이 on whatever needs more emphasis or could be considered more important.
남자는 메시지가 있습니다. There is a man and he has a message, but the part with more attention/emphasis is the message he has.
남자가 메시지는 있습니다. (I switched 가 and 는). There is a man and he has a message, but what's getting more attention is that there's a man that has the message. 》Maybe the secretary from before came in and said "There's a message for you," making the message already known. "Who has it?" You ask. "A man has the message," replied the secretary, placing the 가 on the man because he's the new information.
Hopefully this makes more sense to anyone reading it! I know I could've used a better explanation when I first learned how this stuff worked, heheh.
TL;DR
Your examples are incorrect because you are mixing different use cases of the topic marker. To put it succintly:
- Subject and Topic markers tag old/new information only in the context of sentence formation; as a response to a question.
- Noun markers are not interchangeable. However topic markers can replace subject (and object) markers.
- Topic markers can be used to add contrasting emphasis.
Examples
The old/new information paradigm occurs because of how a sentence is formed. This is best illustrated in Question-Answer pairs.
- A sentence whose subject is tagged with a subject marker answers questions about who/what/where. The sentence introduces new information about the subject given an old cirumstance.
누구가 메시지가 있습니까? = "Who has the message?"
남자가 메시지가 있습니다 = "The man has a message."
누구가 메시지를 씁니까? = "Who writes the messages?"
남자가 메시지를 씁니다 = "The man writes the messages."
- A sentence whose subject is tagged with a topic marker answers questions about the subject itself. The sentence introduces new information about the circumstances about an old subject.
남자는 어떻습니까? = "What about the man?"
남자는 메시지가 있습니다 = "The man has a message."
Existential verb 있다 creates a relation between two phrases and tags both phrases with a subject marker. Topic markers can replace these instances of the subject marker.
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남자가 메시지가 있습니다 = "The man has a message."
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남자는 메시지가 있습니다 = "The man has a message." or "The man (as opposed to anyone else) has a message."
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남자가 메시지는 있습니다 = "The man has a message (as opposed to anything else)." or "The message has a man."
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남자는 메시지는 있습니다 = "The man (as opposed to anyone else) has a message (as opposed to anything else)."
Direct objects of other verbs cannot be tagged with a subject marker. However topic markers can replace these instances of the object marker as well.
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남자는 메시지가 씁니다 is an ill-formed sentence.
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남자가 메시지를 씁니다 = "The man writes a message." (Answers a who-question)
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남자는 메시지를 씁니다 = "The man writes a message." (Answers a how-question)
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남자가 메시지는 씁니다 = "The man writes a message (as opposed to anything else)." (Answers a who-question)
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남자는 메시지는 씁니다 = "The man writes a message (as opposed to anything else)." (Answers a how-question) or
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남자는 메시지는 씁니다 = "The man (as opposed to anyone else) writes a message (as opposed to anything else)."
In larger sentences with multiple clauses, subjects of these clauses are tagged by subject markers. Typically the topic of the sentence is tagged with a topic marker and all subsequent subjects are tagged with subject markers.
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개는 남자가 쓴 메시지가 있습니다 = "The dog has the message that was written by the man."
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개가 남자가 쓴 메시지가 있습니다 = "The dog has the message that was written by the man." (Answers a who-question)
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개는 남자는 쓴 메시지는 있습니다 = "The dog (as opposed to anyone else) has the message (as opposed to anything else) that was written by the man (as opposed to anyone else)."
These noun markers are used to organize ideas within a sentence. However these markers are frequently dropped because in most cases there is a clear way to organize the ideas. Adding subtext is assisted by markers, but it is primarily conveyed through spoken emphasis.
References
No, this would be confusing and have the translation of either "Meaning doesn't have books" or "Books have no meaning" If you want to specify a group of books and not all books, a specific book that is known, or a group of books that was mentioned earlier; you would need to use (그-Those) So the sentence would be "그 책은 의미가" In this way the listener may be able to infer which books you are saying have no meaning.
"Meaningless" is an adjective in English that does not have a direct translation without some knowledge of modifying Korean verbs.
Duolingo starts you with the noun 의미 ("meaning"). To form the sentence "The book is meaningless.", we construct 책은 의미가 없습니다:
- 책은 = [Regarding the book,]
- 의미가 = [the meaning]
- 없습니다 = [it lacks]
Together this means "The book has no meaning." or "The book is meaningless.".
In a later section (Modifier I), you will learn how to form noun modifiers like English adjectives from Korean verbs.
References:
It's kind of like when you say "fish" in English. Of course, you could say fishes as a plural form, but you could also just say fish to refer to either an unspecified number of fish, or to refer to all fish in general. Of course, context still matters.
e.g. Fish is/are* meaningless 생선은(Fish) 의미가 없습니다(are meaningless) This sentence could also say "A fish is meaningless" so it refers to any/every fish.
- "Is" and "are" are pretty much the same in Korean so it doesn't matter.
Sorry if any explanations were bad. This is based on my understanding of it so if I made a mistake, please don't downvote me. Just correct me in a reply
Because this is a general statement and not regarding a specific book ('the book' when adressing a specific book is often written as 'this book' in Korean) it doesn't need to be written as plural to be interpreted as such. This works with any statement you make that addresses the entirety of a type of thing (a general statement about schools but not your specific school, a general statement about cats but not any specific cat. etc.). Hope this makes sense!
I put down "The book is not meaningful" and it was marked correct. This sentence has a much different connotation in English than "Books are meaningless". I get why it can be both in Korean but in English, the distinction is really important between someone that doesn't think books are important at all, and someone remarking that just ONE book lacks meaning.