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- "A man receives a gift from a…
"A man receives a gift from a woman."
Translation:남자는 여자에게서 선물을 받습니다.
28 Comments
338
9 times out 10 when I see the sentence start with "A" I use nin particle and when the sentence starts with "The" I use ga particle. It seems to work.
A / An Apple, is NOT specific, thats when you use 은/는 . Otherwise, The Apple, which IS specific, thats when you use 이/가 . There may not be any articles in the Korean language, but there are STILL ways to imply soecificity through the use of particles like those mentioned above.
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English articles cannot be mapped cleanly onto Korean particles.
-은/는 marks a topic – basically the central thing you are giving (or asking) new information about. The topic always has to be something already known to the listener. That could be:
- Something which has already come up earlier in the conversation,
- A name or noun behaving like a name (e.g. “mom”) which the listener is expected to be familiar with,
- A general category (e.g. “dogs”).
There is some overlap with English “the” here because English marks nouns which have already come up before with “the”. But categories 2. and 3. would not have “the” (in fact 3. could be “a” because you can take single individual to talk about the category as a whole: “a dog do not sweat = dogs (in general) do not sweat”).
Note that something being the “topic” does not tell you anything about how the noun relates to the verb action. It could be the subject, it could be the object, it could be something else entirely. We have to use context to tell.
-이/가 marks the subject of the verb if it is not the topic. Since it is not the topic, none of the restrictions for topics above apply. The noun could be known already or it might not. It could be a proper name or a general category but it doesn’t have to be. All that’s important is that this noun is the subject of the verb.
For example:
- 식탁에 사과가 있습니다. “There is an apple on the table.”
- 그 사과는 매우 빨갛습니다. “The apple is very red.”
Sentence 1. introduces the apple to the conversation. Since the listener doesn’t know about it yet, we cannot use -는. Thus, since the apple is not the topic, it gets marked with -가 because it’s the subject of the verb 있다 “to be there, to exist”. English uses “a” here, also because the apple has not come up before. In sentence 2. the apple is now known, so the speaker can make it the topic (by marking it with -는 and give new information about it.
Note how the assignment of articles in English is the exact opposite of what you described: “a” where the noun was marked with -가 in Korean and “the” where the noun was marked with -는 in Korean. So there is no direct correlation. In fact the only way I can imagine a noun being marked with “a” in English but -은/는 in Korean is if a single individual is used to represent a general category (“a dog does not sweat”) because nouns which have come up before use “the” in English and proper names don’t use any article at all.
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Yes @eerdogan is roght - both should be correct. My Korean partner confirmed. There's no article in Korean.
both are correct, but duolingo makes it like that in duolingo you should put 는 when there is an "a" and 가 when there is "the"
Typically all the subjects go first before the objects, depending on the sentence. Different from English
Both are fine. 에게서 is more literary/formal than 한테서, so you'd see it in books or formal speech. If it didn't accept, 한테서, you should report the answer as correct.
It sounds unnatural if you switch the order in this case. In general, the rule is that it's the opposite order of English (after the subject). "A man from a woman a gift receives."
So the order would be: Nominantive+dative+accusative+verb? I use those terms so I could understand easily haha (currently learning Czech which deals with cases huft)
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-에게 also works; you can report it if it isn’t accepted. Just -에게서 is explicitly “from (a person)”; -에게 can mean a number of things as well depending on context, most commonly “to (a person)”, e.g.: 친구에게 줬어 “gave it to a friend”.
- 509
-에게 is a case particle which can mean either “to (a person)” or “from (a person)”. Which one it is depends on the verb: If the subject is the sender, then -에게 marks the receiver and vice versa. -에게서 is narrower: It can only mark the receiver. So for “[I] received a present from my brother”, you can say 형에게 선물을 받았습니다 or 형에게서 선물을 받았습니다. But for “[I] gave a present to my brother”, you can only say 형에게 선물을 줬습니다, not 형에게서.
- 509
*받십니다 doesn’t exist. It’s either 받습니다 or 받으십니다. The latter form is composed of the same verb stem 받- + the honorific (respectful) suffix -시- (but because the stem ends in a consonant you have to insert 으 in between) + the verb ending -ㅂ니다 (since -시- ends in a vowel you use -ㅂ니다 rather than -습니다 here).
tell me why working on duolingo on a computer is so mucheasier than on phone because there is the tips section that i can press and that section helps me so much more because on my phone, there is no tips button, just the practice or review button.
