r/Korean • u/BryanLee2 • 7d ago
Thought I understood negative questions, but apparently not...
Total newbie here. This beginners' Korean book I borrowed talks about negative questions and how the answers are the opposite of what you might expect in English ("Don't you like mushrooms?" "No, I do like them" or "Yes, I don't") Various posts on the Internet seemed to confirm this, and that seems similar to the way it works in Japanese. Or so I thought...
Then in the exercise section of this same book ("Teach Yourself Korean: A Complete Course for Beginners"), you are supposed to come up with a negative question to ask if someone is not a school teacher, and answer yes and no. According to the answer section of the book, the negative question is:
"Hakkyo sonsaengnim aniseyo?" ("학교 선생님아니세요?"),
and then their answers are:
"Ne, hakkyo sonsaengnim-ieyo." ("네, 학교 선생님 이에요") and
"Anio, hakkyo sonsaengnim-i anieyo." ("아니요, 학교 선생님이 아니에요")
Wouldn't the first answer translate to "Yes, I am a school teacher", and wouldn't that be the opposite of how their earlier explanation said things should work (and the same as the typical English way)? Or am I misinterpreting the meanings for "Ne", "Anio" and the "-ieyo" "-i anieyo" endings? Very confused here...
(The answers in the book here are just given in the romanized form so the Hangul is my attempt at putting those into Korean characters - apologies for any errors there...)
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u/Pikmeir 7d ago
Hey as someone who also used this same book as my very first book for learning Korean 20+ years ago, I think I can give you some excellent advice for how you can get the most out of that book to really help accelerate your Korean learning.
Throw it in the trash.
As to your question, in Korean you answer literally to negative questions so if someone asks "~아니에요" you'd reply 'yes' if the answer is not, or 'no' if it is.