Object Markers/Particles (을, 를)

It’s taken a few weeks and chapters to get to object markers in Korean. We had learned that Korean is a unique SOV word order language. That structure is fairly common among Asian languages and even forms the basis of the (not-well-supported) claim of an Altaic language family, but it’s very wonky for an English speaker. We have also learned about other particles/markers, like topic particles (은,는), subject particles (이,가 ), and a location particle (에). We’re only just now getting to the object particles of 을 and 를.

This is somewhat curious from an English speaker’s perspective; it seems like this would be the kind of thing to immediately follow the subject and topic particles if you were learning grammar and structure for their sake. The impression I got from our teacher and the structure of the course is that we are beginning from a foundation that privileges speaking as opposed to formal writing. Thus, I’m inferring that as Korean can be very context-dependent, the object particles can be readily discerned once the subject/topic particles are introduced and made clear. Apparently(?), it’s quite common for these to be excluded in conversation.¹

Consider a sentence like this: 저는 영화를 봐요. In the context we were introduced to this, this is literally saying something like “I (저), the topic right now (는), am watching (봐요) a movie (영화)” even as that translation has to switch object and verb to be legible in English. Since spoken Korean can be quite context-dependent, it seems the topic and clear subject make the object clear and no particle is strictly necessary to identify what’s happening once the verb is introduced at the end. However, proper grammar rules would nudge identifying the object of the sentence (영화). Because that ends in a vowel, it gets an object particle of 를.

Here is another one if just to introduce the other object marker. “스티브 씨는 책을 읽어요”, in plain English, would translate to “Steve is reading a book.” Once “Steve” is clearly identified as the topic of the sentence, the object can be inferred after the verb comes at the end. But, for grammar’s sake, we can add an object particle of 을. 을 comes because the final character in the preceding block is a consonant and not a vowel.

There is one other wrinkle we learned with respect to this. Consider a verb we learned in a previous session: 게임하다. This would be, in infinitive form, “to play a game.” If you wanted to do the basic conjugation of this in the present tense, then “게임해요” would be equivalent to “(I’m) gaming” or “(I’m) playing a game” if the context were immediately clear and that we were talking about what I (as the subject) am doing. However, a verb like this has a peculiar attachment of 하다. This is the Korean verb/infinitive “to do.” Thus, you could alternatively say this as “게임을 해요.” That would be saying the exact same thing, but it separates the thing being done from the “doing” (so to say). If you do it that way, proper grammar rules say to add the object particle.