๐จ Korean Adjectives: Describing People, Places & Feelings

Want to say someone is kind? Or that food is delicious? Or you're tired after a long day?
Then you need adjectives — the words that bring color to your Korean sentences! ๐๐ฐ๐ท
In this post, you’ll learn the most common and useful Korean adjectives (ํ์ฉ์ฌ), how to use them naturally, and start making your Korean sound more expressive. ๐ฃ️✨
๐ง What Are Adjectives in Korean?
Korean adjectives act like verbs!
That means they conjugate and go at the end of a sentence just like verbs do.
✅ Basic pattern:
[Subject] + [adjective]์.
Example:
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๋ ์จ๊ฐ ์ข์์. → The weather is good.
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์์์ด ๋ง์์ด์. → The food is delicious.
๐ 20 Useful Korean Adjectives
Korean | Romanization | Meaning | Example Sentence |
---|---|---|---|
์ข๋ค | jota | to be good | ์ค๋ ๊ธฐ๋ถ์ด ์ข์์. (I feel good today.) |
๋์๋ค | nappeuda | to be bad | ๋ ์จ๊ฐ ๋๋น ์. (The weather is bad.) |
๋ง๋ค | manta | to be many/much | ์ฌ๋์ด ๋ง์์. (There are many people.) |
์ ๋ค | jeokda | to be few/little | ์๊ฐ์ด ์ ์ด์. (There’s little time.) |
ํฌ๋ค | keuda | to be big | ์ง์ด ์ปค์. (The house is big.) |
์๋ค | jakda | to be small | ๋ฐฉ์ด ์์์. (The room is small.) |
๊ธธ๋ค | gilda | to be long | ๋จธ๋ฆฌ๊ฐ ๊ธธ์ด์. (The hair is long.) |
์งง๋ค | jjalbda | to be short | ์์ ์ด ์งง์์. (The class is short.) |
๋ง์๋ค | masitda | to be delicious | ๊น์น์ฐ๊ฐ๊ฐ ๋ง์์ด์. (The stew is delicious.) |
๋ง์๋ค | maseopda | to be tasteless | ์ด ์์์ ๋ง์์ด์. (This food is not tasty.) |
์ฌ๋ฏธ์๋ค | jaemiitda | to be fun | ์ํ๊ฐ ์ฌ๋ฏธ์์ด์. (The movie is fun.) |
์ฌ๋ฏธ์๋ค | jaemieopda | to be boring | ์์ ์ด ์ฌ๋ฏธ์์ด์. (The class is boring.) |
์ํ๋ค | apeuda | to be sick/hurt | ๋ฐฐ๊ฐ ์ํ์. (My stomach hurts.) |
ํผ๊ณคํ๋ค | pigonhada | to be tired | ๋๋ฌด ํผ๊ณคํด์. (I’m very tired.) |
์น์ ํ๋ค | chinjeolhada | to be kind | ์ ์๋์ด ์น์ ํด์. (The teacher is kind.) |
์์๋ค | yeppeuda | to be pretty | ๊ฝ์ด ์๋ป์. (The flower is pretty.) |
์์๊ธฐ๋ค | jalsaenggida | to be handsome | ๋ฐฐ์ฐ๊ฐ ์์๊ฒผ์ด์. (The actor is handsome.) |
์กฐ์ฉํ๋ค | joyonghada | to be quiet | ์ฌ๊ธฐ๊ฐ ์กฐ์ฉํด์. (It’s quiet here.) |
์๋๋ฝ๋ค | sikkeureopda | to be noisy | ๊ต์ค์ด ์๋๋ฌ์์. (The classroom is noisy.) |
๊ธฐ์๋ค | gippeuda | to be happy | ์ข์ ์์์ ๊ธฐ๋ป์. (I’m happy with the good news.) |
✍️ How to Use Korean Adjectives
Adjectives can form their own sentence:
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์ด ์ํ๋ ์ฌ๋ฏธ์์ด์. → This movie is fun.
Or they can modify a noun:
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์ฌ๋ฏธ์๋ ์ฑ → a fun book
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์์ ๊ฝ → a pretty flower
✅ Conjugated form ends in -์์/-์ด์/-ํด์ depending on the verb stem.
๐ฃ️ Practice Ideas
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Write 5 sentences with your favorite adjectives.
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Look around your room and describe things aloud in Korean.
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Try this sentence frame:
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์ด [noun]์/๋ [adjective]์.
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์: ์ด ์์์ ๋ง์์ด์.
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๐ฏ Challenge: Say 5 things about your day using adjectives!
๐ฉ๐ซ Want to Practice Live?
Learning adjectives is just the first step. Let’s use them in conversation so you sound expressive and natural — not robotic!
๐ Book a live class with me on italki:
https://www.italki.com/ko/teacher/7916559
Let’s make your Korean more colorful — one adjective at a time! ๐จ๐ฌ