china_shop's Korean journal and language-learning

만 vs 뿐 vs 그냥
물만 주세요 Give me only water
물뿐이에요 It's only water
그냥 물 주세요 Just give me water, or (if 그냥 is emphasised) I want plain water, I want just normal water.

-뿐이다 is "only" used with 이다.
이것뿐이에요 There's only this
오늘뿐이에요 It's only today, today's the only chance

From here.


-는 셈이다
It's as good as, It's like, You might as well, This almost equals...

eg 이 정도면 다 된 셈이죠 If you've done this much, it's as good as finished.

From here.

I was getting confused about some similar-sounding verbs this morning, so I tried setting them out in a list in Google translate, and eventually realised that fundamentally there are only two base verbs, plus 오다 and 가다, plus passive forms. (Also, Google translate is terrible and misleading.)

The two base verbs are:

돌다 to turn, to rotate
들다 to enter, to hold

So adding 오다 and 가다 leads to

돌다 to turn
돌아오다 to return, to come back
돌아가다 to return, to go back

들다 to enter
들어오다 to come in
들어가다 to go in

And making 들다 passive gives:

들이다 to let someone in, to allow someone in, to adopt
들여오다 to import, to smuggle


Not to be confused (although I totally did) with these, which are from the passive of 듣다 to hear:
들리다 to be heard, to reach
들려오다 to reach one's ears, to come into hearing