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불-/부-: Sino-Korean Negative Prefix
2025-08-17
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Example Sentences#

  1. 마을 사람들은 그에게 큰 불행이라고 말했습니다.1
    The villagers said to him it was a great misfortune.

    • 불행 means ‘misfortune’ or ‘unhappiness’. It is formed from the Sino-Korean negative prefix 불- (similar to ‘un-’, ‘non-’, ‘dis-’, or ‘mis-’ in English) and meaning ‘fortune’.
    • 이다 is the verb ‘to be’.
    • 라고 is a quotative marker, indicating that the phrase is being quoted or reported.
  2. 마을 사람들은 이번에는 큰 불행이라고 말했습니다.1
    The villagers said this time it was a great misfortune.

    • 불행 means ‘misfortune’ or ‘unhappiness’. It is formed from the Sino-Korean negative prefix 불- (similar to ‘un-’, ‘non-’, ‘dis-’, or ‘mis-’ in English) and meaning ‘fortune’.
    • 이다 is the verb ‘to be’.
    • 라고 is a quotative marker, indicating that the phrase is being quoted or reported.

Footnotes#

  1. Sentence from Bad Luck Good Luck Story. 2

불-/부-: Sino-Korean Negative Prefix
https://koreanstorylab.com/posts/grammar/불--부--sino-korean-negative-prefix/
Author
Korean Story Lab
Published at
2025-08-17
License
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0