How to use negative markers 안 or 못 in Korean sentences

 You might have encountered the words 안 and 못 in Korean sentences. They are both negative markers, which means they can make a verb or an adjective negative. For example, "나는 술을 안 마셔요." or "나는 술을 못 마셔요." Both sentences have the meaning of "I do not drink alcohol" in English. In this blog post, I will explain some tricky parts of using 안 or 못 in Korean sentences.

 

1. Meaning

When you use 안, you are saying that you do not do something by choice or preference. For example, "나는 술을 안 마셔요" means that I do not drink alcohol even though I have an option to drink. On the other hand, when you use 못, you are saying that you cannot do something because of some obstacle or limitation. For example, "나는 술을 못 마셔요" means that I cannot drink alcohol because of allergy, age or some other issues.

 

2. Spacing

Note that in writing you put a space between 안/못 and the verb because 안 and 못 are adverbs. Although it is very common in informal writing (for example 안마셔요 or 못마셔요 in text messages), be sure that writing 안/못 without space before a verb is grammatically wrong. So you should be careful in formal writing such as reports or bios.

 

3. Position

You should put 안 or 못 right before the verb in a sentence. However, this can be tricky for beginners, especially when the verb is a compound form of a noun and “하다 (to do)”. For example, let's say you want to make a negative form of the sentence "점심에 식사했다 (I had lunch at noon)“. Beginners might think that the verb is 식사하다 (to have a meal), so they might write "점심에 안 식사했다." But this is wrong. The correct answer is "점심에 식사 안 했다." Because 식사하다 is actually composed of 식사 (meal) + 하다 (to do), so the verb that needs to be negated is 했다 (did).

 

4. Collocation

You can use 안 with both verbs and adjectives, but you cannot use 못 with adjectives. For example, you can say "수지는 안 예쁘다" (Suzy is not pretty) but it is wrong to say "수지는 못 예쁘다." There is no logical reason why Suzy cannot be pretty, so you should use 안 instead of 못.

 

I hope this blog post helped you understand how to use 안 and 못 in Korean sentences. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. Thank you for reading!