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- "책은 의미가 없습니다."
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So does 의미 have a definition of 'meaning'? And therefore with 없습니다 it becomes 'meaningless'?
책(books)은(particle, meaning books in general) 의미(meaning)가(particle, to be or to have)없습니다(does not/negative). :) ♡
it takes it from "to have a meaning" to "to not have a meaning", which is "to be meaningless" :) to english speaker it looks like positive, but the word "meaning" is kind of a part of the verb so it's not
Korean has these things called 'particles', which are blocks you attach to the end of words to denote things like topic or object. I think the 가 is one
Yes 가 is an extension and it is added at the ending of the subject word ending in a vowel. But is the subject word ends in consonant, we add 이 to it.
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 :)
In the sentence "The bread is tasty", the bread is the subject and its deliciousness is the topic. Does that make sense?
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I'm not convinced tasty would be the topic. But even if it is, just because it's clear in a "subject verb object" example doesn't make it clear in other examples.
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In fact, it's often the opposite: "The bread is tasty"->"The bread has flavor"->"Regarding the bread, there is flavor/flavor exists" and flavor (tasty/tastiness) becomes the subject and bread is the topic.
They come from the same Chinese characters: 의미 意味 ①meaning; sense ②implication ③significance; meaning
Sometimes they come and say "yes, men are people" and i'm like WDYM?? is there some kinda agenda they're trying to convince us of?
Okay, so if i understand this correctly, Chaek = book, uimi = meaning, and eopseumnida= to not have/ or to not exist.
Is 의미 the word for meaningless, with 가 as an addition? Or is 의미가 in its entirety the word for meaningless?
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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 :)
What would the sentence be for the translation THE books are meaningless to be correct? Duo marked me wrong.
I think itd be "책이 의미가..." because then theyre both the topic.. im just guessing though
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.
So if item A is/isn't object b and object b could be used as an adjective why is it considered wrong? For example... "The book is meaningless" easily becomes "the meaningless book" in English.
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"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:
Anyone else feeling personally attacked because someone thought books are meaningless?
Everyone here is taking about the subject/topic particle, while me here is a bit mad about the sentence given, books are not meaningless
책은 means book or implies THE book, it shouldn't be books PLURAL if it doesnt have the plural marking 들. Books would be 책들
Actually, from what I learnt, I think 책은 can be plural... Under the right context of course:)
Since 없습니다 means 'not to be' if I understood correctly and 의미가 means 'meaningless' why the answer is not 'books aren't meaningless' I don't know if I'm clear... I am quite confused
I'm confused on why there are 2 negations in the sentence. Why is the meaning not 'books are not meaningless'? Thank you for your help!
To break down the sentence for you: 책은 (the books) 의미가 (meaning) 없습니다 (there is not). Therefore, the sentence can be translated as: the books are meaningless. If you wanted to say 'books are not meaningless' or rather 'the books are meaningful, you would say ' 책은 의미가 있습니다'
How would you say that a singular book is meaningless? Does using 은/는 after 책 make it plural? Would using 이 after 책 instead of 은 change the meaning of the sentence, or would you have to reformat the entire sentence? I'm lost ㅠㅠ
은/는 is a topic marker. You use 은/는 to mark the topic of the sentence. In this case, the topic of the sentence is the book, and we want to indicate that it is precisely the book that is meaningless, therefore we add emphasis using 은/는. If you wanted to make a noun plural, you would add 들 at the end of it. For example, 여자들 means women, 남자들 means men, etc. However, in most cases, especially in everyday conversation, the 들 is dropped completely from the sentence. So, the sentence '책은 의미가 없습니다' could mean 'books are meaningless', or it could imply that 'the book (singular) is meaningless'.
Sorry but i'm not a native English speaker, so I just wanted to know : what is "meaningless" ? ^^'
HELP ME PLS i don't understand how to differentiate "interesting" and "uninteresting " or "charming" and "not charming" pls explain me !!!
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The key distinction is the verb used in the sentence.
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To say that someone has something, you use the verb 있다 (conjugated to 있습니다).
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To say that someone lacks something, you use the verb 없다 (conjugated to 없습니다).
The sentence can be more literally translated as "Books lack meaning". Hence the words:
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책 = book
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의미 = meaning
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없습니다 = lacks
are formed as "책은 의미가 없습니다".
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This sentence confused me at first bcs it sounds like 책은 의미고 없습니다. Not sure if thats DL or the TTS or my hearing playing tricks on me
Why is it that for some things, like having no meaning, you'll have a space between meaning (의미가) and not having (없습니다) while for other things, like being uncool, you won't have a space (멋없습니다)? How do I decide if my sentence will look like [thing]은/는 [what it isn't]가 없습니다 or [thing]은/는 [what it isn't]없습니다?
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Some common contractions have been formalized by the Korean language. For example, 멋없습니다 is one such contraction. In general, you will find in written Korean that nouns are separated by a space from the relevant existential verb (like 없습니다).
I said "The book is uninteresting" could this fit? or are interesting and meaningful to different to be synonyms
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Plurality is usually determined from context, such as talking about multiple books previously in the conversation. This sentence can also be seen as a general statement about books as indicated by the "X은/는 Y이/가 Verb" structure.
You can also explicitly emphasize the plurality by attaching the particle ~들 to the noun.
