In the previous lesson, we learned about verb stems.
To say “I want to” do a verb in Korean, we need to attach a grammar form to its verb stem.
First, take a verb stem and attach “고 싶다.”
싶다 is also a verb! So, to use this grammar form in a sentence, you need to conjugate 싶다.
Using the rules we’ve learned on conjugation, we can make sentences such as:
Examples:
I want to drink coffee
I want to eat pizza
To say you want to have something, you can also use this form.
가지다 means “to have,” and you can combine it with 고 싶다 to say you want to have something.
Examples:
I want to have this bag
가지다 can also be shortened to 갖다, and can be used in the same way.
원하다 is a verb that, by itself, means “to want.” You can directly conjugate it to get:
Note that 원하다 is not normally used to express a desire to have something tangible (i.e. an object). It’s also not commonly used in daily speech.
You may hear it in song lyrics or in situations where there’s a romantic undertone:
Note that the 고 싶다 form we just learned can only be used to say “I want to” or “You want to”, not “He/she/they want to."" We’ll cover how to say the latter in a future lesson.