The Location of Things

Korean grammar is a trip. For example, 제 가방은 책상 옆에 있엉요, in plain English, would be “my bag is next to the desk.” Broken into pieces, it’s my (제) bag (가방), speaking of (은), desk (책상), next to (옆), the location of (에), there exists (있엉요). Easy, right? 😅

No matter, let’s try to make some sense of this as an absolute beginner.

Prepositions

Korean has prepositions much like English. You’ll just have to memorize these.

If there is a distinction between 아래 and 밑 , we did not learn them. They are equivalent, it seems, in everyday use.

Example Uses

Here are some examples exercises we got, slightly modified sometimes from what we got in class.

• 가방이 어디에 있어요?
• 책상 왼쪽에 있어요

In the above, the bold prompt asks where is the location of the bag. The italicized response says it’s to the left of the desk. Notice the use of subject markers to emphasize the thing that needs a location. Notice as well the use of 에 as a location marker.

Other examples follow. As I understand it, Korean can be kind of(?) forgiving with the exact order of words in a context like this but not the use of particles. The way I want to commit this to memory is the subject-where the thing is-preposition-verb. It seems like saying something like “제 컴퓨터는 위에 책상 있어요” would be perfectly valid Korean and make more sense to an English speaker. I’m going this way, though… unless for some reason it’s wrong.