Korean Job Discussion Forums

[tomato]

What is the difference between a 씨끝, a 토씨, and a 접미사?
Yes, I've looked up all three words, and I know that a 씨끝 is a word ending, a 토씨 is a particle, and a 접미사 is a suffix.
But all three of those English words are meaningless to me, too.

As near as I can figure out, a 씨끝 (word ending) functions as a conjunction.
In the sentence "가게에 가서 우유를 삽니다. (I go to the store in order to buy milk),"
-서, which means "in order to," is a 씨끝 (word ending).

As near as I can figure out, a 토씨 (particle) serves as a postposition, or a preposition which comes at the end of a word rather than the beginning.
So -에서, which means "at," is a 토씨 (particle).

But I still have no idea what a 접미사 (suffix) is.
I am trying to learn the first 3000 words in 연세 word frequency list.
Out of these 3000, there are 5 of these:

19. -들, which serves as a plural
82. -이, as in 먹이다; also as in 높이
53. -적, which means "character, tendency, condition"
654. 없
1947. -답다, which means "characterized by"

I especially need help on #654.
I can't find the word listed in 엤센스 as a 접미사.

I know that these meanings are eliminated:

26. the inflected adjective 없는
214. the adverb 없이

[Hater Depot]

English suffixes include -able, -ful, etc.

Particles are not well-defined. Korean textbooks all say that -이/-가 and -은/-는 are particles and nothing else.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_particle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_suffixes

[Mashimaro]

if you want to improve your korean i'd concentrate more on conversation and less on grammar and memorising vocab.
seems like you are learning korean like koreans try to learn english (and we all know how well that works)

[Woland]

Paul Nation has argued for the superiority of vocabulary lists over other methods in learning vocabulary based on substantial empirical evidence. And since without vocabulary, you've got nothing to say... I'd say your making a good approach to gaining initial knowledge of vocabulary items, Tomato.

The other nice thing about frequency lists is that they do help you know which words you are more likely to encounter and thus, are more valuable to know. Nation has also argued that most school-based instruction in English vocabulary should revolve around the list of the 2,000 most frequently occurring word families in English, which account for about 80% of the tokens in a typical text.

I don't know how this Korean word list was constructed. If the list is built from a narrow set of written genres, it may not tell about vocabulary in other contexts. You could end up with a great reading vocabuulary but not one for speaking. One thing that strikes me odd about this list is the inclusion of case endings, like -i/-ga and -(l)ul. Normally, grammatical endings like those wouldn't be counted in a list like this, which suggests that they've defined 'word' in a very particular way in making their list.

I assume you know already that the advice to get out and use the language is good advice for consolidating and automizing the knowledge gained from studying the word list.