The subject marker marks the subject of a verb, or who or what is performing said verb.
This marker works with both action and descriptive verbs, unlike the object marker (을/를), which can only mark the object receiving an action (and thus can only be used with action verbs).
How do we mark words with the subject marker to show who is performing a verb?
When the subject ends in a consonant, attach 이.
When the subject ends in a vowel, attach 가.
Examples:
Kimchi is spicy.
Kimchi (subject) performs the act of being spicy (맵다 - to be spicy).
Sojoon eats an apple.
Sojoon (subject) eats (action) an apple (object).
Informal polite:
서준:
(As for me) hamburgers are delicious. I also like kimchi.
영호:
(As for me) I like hamburgers more. Kimchi is spicy.
Let’s break down the above:
저는 is simply being used to make Sojoon the topic of the conversation. It doesn’t literally mean “I” here.
Since the topic is established with 저는, 햄버거 becomes 햄버거가 instead of 햄버거는.
햄버거 is the subject, performing the action of being delicious (맛있다 - to be delicious).
저는 switches the topic of the conversation from Sojoon to Yongho.
Yongho is the subject, performing the action verb 좋아하다 (to like) on 햄버거 (hamburgers). So 햄버거 becomes 햄버거를 using the object marker.
The topic of the conversation is already Yongho, so we use the subject marker instead of the topic marker here because we’re still talking about Yongho’s opinions.
Using 저 with the subject marker is a special case:
How would we say this? What goes in the blank?
When using the subject marker with 저, you get “제가” instead of “저가”: