EveryEduEnglishKorean
Who Did It
Passive and causative — how written Korean loses its subject, and how to get it back
Notices, reports, news items and the whole back half of the TOPIK II reading paper run on the passive, and learners arrive there having only ever built active sentences. This week covers all four ways Korean forms a passive and all the ways it forms a causative, but the thing it is really selling is the other half of the picture: Korean uses the passive far less than English does, because Korean can simply drop a subject where English has to promote something into the empty slot. Learners who think in English overuse the passive, and the double passive they produce — 읽혀지다, 보여지다, 잊혀지다 — is the single loudest marker of writing that has been translated rather than written. Seven daily lessons: what the passive is honestly for, the twenty suffix pairs that are a list and not a rule, the regular ending that covers everything else and turns adjectives into changes, the causative suffixes and how to tell them from identical-looking passives, the one completely regular pair that runs every formal notice in the country, and the construction Koreans use to announce their own good news without sounding as though they are boasting. The last day is a checklist for your own writing, and it is equally clear about where the passive is exactly right.
- Lessons
- 7
- Days
- 7
- Minutes
- 121
- Quiz items
- 49
- To pass
- 80%
Curriculum
Each lesson opens when the one before it is passed at 80%.
Week 1 · Passive and causative
- 1When the subject disappearsWhat the passive is for — and why Korean uses it far less than EnglishRecognise a passive sentence and know when Korean would not have used one.
- 이 · 히 · 리 · 기 — a list, not a ruleTwenty verbs worth learning as pairs, and why looking for a pattern wastes your timeRecognise and use the twenty commonest suffix passives.
- -아/어지다 — the regular oneWorks on almost any verb, and turns adjectives into changesBuild a passive from any verb, and describe something becoming.
- Making someone do it이 · 히 · 리 · 기 · 우 · 구 · 추 — the same letters, the opposite jobBuild a causative and tell it apart from a passive that looks identical.
- 하다 → 되다 and 시키다The regular pair that runs every notice, report and news item in KoreaTurn any 하다 verb into its passive and causative, and read a formal notice.
- -게 하다, -게 되다, and letting rather than makingThe construction that works on every verb — and the one that says it just happenedSay you let someone do something, and say something came about without naming a cause.
- Taking the translation out of your KoreanDouble passives, overuse, and the sentences to stop writingFind and fix the passive habits that mark writing as translated.
Languages this course is written in
The lessons are explained in one language. Where a translation exists your screen uses it; where it does not, you see the original rather than a blank.