Adjectives Change Form Too
Learners whose languages do not conjugate adjectives may expect words like "pretty" or "big" to remain unchanged.
In Korean, both verbs and adjectives combine with endings and change form in sentences. In a sentence such as 꽃이 예뻐요 , the adjective itself functions as the predicate, so a separate copula is not added.
Verbs and Adjectives in Action
Compare the two representative patterns:
먹다 becomes 먹어요
예쁘다 becomes 예뻐요
One is an action verb and the other is an adjective, but both have stems that combine with endings to build sentence forms. The exact combination and form-change steps are introduced in later lessons.
No Extra Copula
A common beginner mistake is looking for a separate equivalent of "is" and adding 이에요 or 예요 after a conjugated adjective.
To mean "The flower is pretty," use 꽃이 예뻐요 . The form 예뻐요 already serves as the predicate in this sentence, so do not add 이에요 or 예요 after it.
The Boundary
Verbs and adjectives share the basic property of combining with endings, but they do not use every ending in the same way and their sentence functions are not completely identical.
This lesson focuses only on the shared fact that both conjugate. The rules for particular endings are introduced separately.