Now that we’ve gone over the basics of the ㄷ ending verbs I’m going to go into a little bit more detail about the intricacies of the ㄷ ending verbs. You might be wondering, how will I know when to conjugate 묻다 as 묻어요 or 물어요. You do this by trying to figure out the context of the sentence. If you want the context of the sentence to be about asking a question, you’ll use 물어요. If you’re going to write a sentence about burying something, use 묻어요. Also, sometimes 묻어요 can actually mean “stain” or “smear”. For example, 피가 묻어요 means “the blood smears”. (피 = blood.) So, be aware of that meaning as well.

Now that you know 묻다 doesn’t necessarily change to a ㄹ ending depending on the meaning, let me show you some other verbs that end in ㄷ that do not change to ㄹ. The verb 받다 ends in ㄷ but does not change to a ㄹ. 받다 means “to receive”. Take a look at this sentence. “돈을 받아요“. (돈 = money. 받아요 = receive). In English this means “[I] receive money”. Note that since 받다 has an 아 vowel, it’s going to be conjugated at 받아요 not 받어요. Also, 묻다 has a 우 vowel so it’ll be conjugated as 묻어요 or 물어요. I talked about this when we talked about the ㄹ ending verbs on September 14th, so check that post out for a refresher on this concept.

The question that I get the most is, how do you know when a ㄷ ending verb ends in a ㄹ? The answer is that you just have to know. In other words, you’ll just have to memorize which verbs change to ㄹ and which verbs don’t. Now what happens when ㄷ ending verbs are conjugated into the deferential polite form? So far we’ve been dealing with the ㄷ ending verbs in the standard polite form, but let’s take a look at the verbs in the deferential polite form. Let’s take a look at a sentence like this, “어머님의 말씀을 듣습니다“. (어머님 = mother. 말씀 = word. 듣습나다 = listen) which means “[I] listen to [my] mother’s words”.

Notice how 듣다 doesn’t change to a ㄹ in the deferential polite form. It only changes in the standard polite form. In this sense, the deferential polite form is much easier to form then the standard polite form. Let’s take another verb and conjugate it in the deferential polite form. 걷다 will be 걷습니다. To conjugate into the deferential polite form, drop the 다 and you’re left with the stem 걷. Then add 습니다 to the stem. Try this with the verb 묻다. Did you get it? You should have conjugated it to 묻습니다. Much easier than the standard polite form right?