"누가 못생겼어요?"
Translation:Who is ugly?
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Look deeper into the meaning of 생기다: to be formed, to appear, to happen.
The ugliness is a trait that emerged/happened in the past. Consider the expression: her face is disfigured. Disfigured is in the past tense. Although the trait of the disfigurement is ongoing, the statement is about a past event that caused it.
The Anglophone mentality is that the person is “uglying” (present continuous). The Korean mentality is that the person became ugly at a past point in time and that ugliness carries into the present where a person making an observation will simply say “hey that person became ugly at some point in the past!”
I wrote more here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/24492618
the verb "to be ugly" in korean translates better to "was poorly formed" as in the ugliness was present when you were formed, which is something that would make me cry if someone told me this in real life.
its just something koreans conjugate past tense without realizing it or paying it much attention.
581
Many thanks. And I suppose context would make it clear whether the speaker means "was ugly" or "is ugly." For example: 어렸을 때는 못생겼는데 지금은 잘생겼어요.