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The Future Tense Posted by on Feb 28, 2010 in Grammar

We’ll be taking about the future tense today. Let’s look at the first sentence:

공부할 겁니다 = I will study.

The construction ~/ 겁니다 is what makes this future tense.

지금 먹을 겁니다 = I will eat now.

This is the same construction as before, but slightly different. Here 을 겁니다 was used. When the in 먹다 (to eat) is dropped, ends in a consonant. Therefore, when the stem ends in a consonant, 을 겁니다 is used. Conversely, when the is dropped in 하다 (to do) is the stem, which ends in a vowel. Therefore, 할 겁니다 is used.

Now let’s look at this sentence:

공부 안 할 겁니다 = I will not study.

지금 안 먹을 겁니다 = I will not eat now.

Both of these sentences has the construction ~안 를/을 겁니다.

Now compare this with these sentences:

공부 하지 않을 겁니다 = I will not study.

지금 먹지 않을 겁니다 = I will not eat.

But of these sentences have the ~지 않을 겁니다 construction. The difference between ~지 않을 겁니다 and ~안 를/을 겁니다 is that ~안 를/을 겁니다 is more colloquial and used in spoken speech, while ~지 안을 겁니다 is more formal and used in written speech. Both ~지 않을 겁니다 and ~안 를/을 겁니다 are both formal, but ~지 않을 겁니다 is slightly more formal.

Here’s also another tip, and are pronounced the same way. 않다 is actually a contracted form of 안 하다. Think of it as this way:

빨래하지 않을 겁니다 = I will not do the laundry.

빨래 안 할 겁니다 = I will not do the laundry.

Both sentences mean the same thing, but notice that the second sentence has the contracted form. In the second sentence, the in has moved to the bottom of 않을 of the first sentence.

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Comments:

  1. Joel:

    Thanks, Ginny! These notes always help my understanding a little more. Appreciate you taking time to compose this.

    ~j