-๋ ๋์ VS. -(์ผ)๋ฉด์ [+ (์) ๋]
anon asked: whatโs the difference between -๋ ๋์ and -(์ผ)๋ฉด์? Iโm so confused
This is a great question! I am assuming youโre asking because they can be translated as the same thing into English. I understand why there will be confusion because, under context, these grammar points arenโt really distinguishable in English as they are in Korean.ย
-๋ ๋์; while, during [go here for more]
Use this when:
Youโre not talking about the same doer of the action [์๋ง๊ฐ ์ค๊ฑฐ์ง๋ฅผ ํ๋ ๋์ ์๋น ๋ ํ์ฅ์ค์ ์ฒญ์ํ์ด์ - Mom cleaned the dishes while dad cleaned the bathroom]
You are talking about the same doer of the action [์ด์ ๊ณต๋ถํ๋ ๋์ ๋ฌธ์ ๊ฐ ์๊ฒผ์ด์ - I found a problem while studying yesterday]
The doer of the action is inanimate [๋น๊ฐ ๋ง์ด ์ค๋ ๋์ ๊ตฌ๋ฆ์ด ์ด๋์์ก์ด์ - the clouds darkened while it poured]
Try to remember that ๋์ is used for a period of time; โ-๋ ๋์โ์ ์ผ์ ๊ธฐ๊ฐ ๋์ ์ฌ์ฉ๋๋ค. Consider the example in the first rule. Think of the context of this sentence as: during the time it took for my mom to do the dishes, my dad cleaned the bathroom. Yes, you can switch it around because contextually it means the same thing, โ์๋น ๊ฐ ํ์ฅ์ค์ ์ฒญ์ํ๋ ๋์ ์๋ง๋ ์ค๊ฑฐ์ง๋ฅผ ํ์ด์.โ
NOTE: Because โ-๋โ attaches to the dependent clause [์๋ง๊ฐ ์ค๊ฑฐ์ง๋ฅผ ํ๋ ๋์], the verb before it does not take tense and underlyingly takes the tense of the independent clauseโs verb [์๋น ๋ ํ์ฅ์ค์ ์ฒญ์ํ์ด์]. I used the past tense [๊ณผ๊ฑฐ] in my examples, but you can use the present tense [ํ์ฌ] or future tense [๋ฏธ๋], obviously, depending on what you want to say.ย
More Examples:
ํ๊ตญ์์ ์ฌ๋ ๋์ ํ๊ตญ์ด๋ฅผ ๋นจ๋ฆฌ ๋ฐฐ์ ์ด์ - While I lived in Korea, I learned Korean quickly.
๋ํ๊ต ๋๋๋ ๋์ ์ด๋์์ ์ด ๊ฑฐ์์? - Where are you going to live while attending University?
์๋น ๊ฐ ์ ๋ ์ ์ค๋นํ๋ ๋์ ์ ๋ ๋ณดํต ์์ ๋ฅผ ํด์ - I usually do my homework while my dad makes dinner.
ํฌ์ฃผ๊ฐ ์ธ์ํ๋ ๋์ ํ๋ฏผ์ ์ด๋ฅผ ๋ฆ์์ด์ - While Heeju washed her face, Hyemin brushed her teeth.
์ ๊ฐ ์๋ ๋์ ๊ณ ์์ด๋ ์ ์๋ฌผ์ ๋จน์์ด์ - While I slept, my cat ate my plants.
-(์ผ)๋ฉด์; while
Use this when:
The doer of the action is the same [ํฌ์ฃผ๋ ๋จน์ผ๋ฉด์ ์ ํ๋ธ๋ฅผ ๋ด์ - Heeju watches YouTube while eating]
The action is happening simultaneously [์งํ์ฒ ์ ๊ธฐ๋ค๋ฆฌ๋ฉด์ ์น๊ตฌํ๊ณ ์ ํํ์ด์ - I waited for the metro while I called my friend]
Contrasting two actions [๋ํ์ ํ๊ตญ์์ ์ผํ๊ณ ์ถ๋ค๊ณ ํ๋ฉด์ ํ๊ตญ์ด๋ฅผ ๋ชปํด์ - Daehyun said they wanted to work in Korea, but they donโt speak Korean]
NOTE: You can only use -(์ผ)๋ฉด์ when talking about the same doer of the action or state. For example, ํฌ์ฃผ๋ ์ผํ๋ ๋์ ์์ ์ ๋ค์์ด์ and ํฌ์ฃผ๋ ์ผํ๋ฉด์ ์์ ์ ๋ค์์ด์. BOTH work and are grammatically correct. The working and listening to music is being done by ํฌ์ฃผ, whether at the same time, or during work. However, a sentence like โํฌ์ฃผ๋ ์ผํ๋ฉด์ ํ๋ฏผ์ ์์ ์ ๋ค์์ด์โ is grammatically incorrect. Even if ํฌ์ฃผ and ํ๋ฏผ are doing this at the same time, you must use -๋ ๋์.ย
More Examples:
์ค์ํ๋ฉด์ ๋ ธ๋๋ฅผ ๋ถ๋ ์ด์ - While showering, I sang
์๋ฆฌํ๋ฉด์ ์๋ฆฌ๋ฒ์ ๋ด์ - While cooking, I read a recipe
์์ ์ ๋ค์ผ๋ฉด์ ๋ฉ๋ชจ๋ฅผ ํด์ - I take notes while in class
์ด์ ํ๋ฉด์ ๋ฌธ์๋ฅผ ๋ณด๋ด์ง ๋ง์ธ์ - Donโt text while driving
ํฌ์ฃผ๋ ์์ ๋ฅผ ํ๋ฉด์ ์์ ์ ๋ค์ด์ - While Heeju does her homework, she listens to music
Differences between the two:
You can use ๋์ with nouns [๋ช ์ฌ], you cannot use (์ผ)๋ฉด์ with nouns. However, you can use (์ด)๋ฉด์ with nouns in conjunction with ์ด๋ค [์ ๋ ๋ํ์์ด๋ฉด์ ์ ์๋์ด์์ - I am a university student and a teacher]. This expresses two states of being that happen at the same time.ย
You can not use -๋ ๋์ to contrast actions
You MUST use the same doer of action with (์ผ)๋ฉด์
-๋ ๋์ expresses an action that occurs during a period of time; -(์ผ)๋ฉด์ does not necessarily take place at a specific time
Similarities between the two:
You attach tense at the end of the sentence, you cannot attach tense to the dependent verb
They are, most of the time, interchangeable; just remember the rules above
BONUS! -(์/ใน) ๋; when
The closest origin of โ๋โ I could find in ํ์ is โๆโ. โ๋โ refers to an event/time/period of action (another translation of ๆ can be ์).ย
Things to remember:
You can use -๋ with nouns and -(์/ใน) ๋ with verbs.
Because it refers to a specific moment, you can attach tense to -(์/ใน) ๋
You can use this with adjectives!
Can be used with -๊น์ง and -๋ถํฐ! [๋ + ๋ถํฐ = since // ๋ + ๊น์ง = until]
Examples:
๋นํ๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ๋์ฐฉํ ๋ ์๋งํ๊ณ ์ ํํ ๊ฒ์ - When my plane lands, Iโll call my mom
๋ํ์[์ด์์] ๋ ๋์ด ์์์์์ - When I was a uni student, I didnโt have money, as you know
ํ๊ตญ ์น๊ตฌ์๊ฒ ํ๊ตญ๋ง๋ก ํ๊ธฐ ์์ํ์ ๋ ๋ง์ดํด์ ๊น์ง ๋๋์ด์ - When I started speaking Korean to my Korean friend, Michael was surprised!
๊ณต๋ถํ ๋ ์์ ์ ๋ค์ด์ - When I study, I listen to music
์๊ฐ์ด ์์ ๋ ์๋ ค์ฃผ์ธ์ - Let me know when you have time
16์ด ๋๋ถํฐ ํ๊ตญ์ด๋ฅผ ๋ฐฐ์ ์ด์ - Iโve been learning Korean since I was 16
์ด๋ ๊ฒ ๋ ๋๊น์ง ๋ ์ป์ด์ผ ํด์ - You have to wash it more until itโs like this
ํ๊ตญ์ ๊ฐ ๋ ํ๋ํ๊ณ ์ ์ฃผ๋ ๋ฐฉ๋ฌธํ๊ณ ์ถ์ด์ - When I go Korea, I want to visit Jeju and Hongdae
ํ๋ฏผ ์ธ๋๋ ํ๊ตญ์ ๋ค์ด๊ฐ์ ๋ ์ ๊ฐ ๋๋ฌด ์ฌํ์ด์ - I was so sad when Hyemin when back to Korea
์ด๋ ธ์ ๋ ๊ทธ๋ฆผ์ ๊ทธ๋ฆฌ๊ธฐ ์์ํ์ด์ - I started drawing when I was a kid
Hope this helps! If thereโs any more confusion, please, donโt hesitate to send another message or ask!ย
Happy Learning :)ย
~ SK101











