Lesson 24
In Level 6 Lesson 21 and 23, we looked at how the passive voice works in Korean. In this lesson, let us learn a structure that you can use with the passive voice to say that something has been put into a certain state and stays that way.
For example, the verb for “to put something somewhere” is 놓다. The passive voice is 놓이다, so you can say, “놓였어요” to mean, “It was put down (on the table/ground/etc. and it remains there).”
You can use this grammatical structure when you want to say that something is on the floor/table/etc. because it has been put down there by someone.
Passive Voice + -어 있다
= to have been put into a certain state (by someone) and stay that way
What is the difference between “Passive Voice” and “Passive Voice + -어 있다”?
Passive voice describes an action as it gets done, whereas “Passive voice + -어 있다” expresses the state that the subject is in as a result of the passive action. This “resultant state” structure is more commonly used in Korean than in English; for phrases that you want to express in English with just the passive voice, you can use this structure to express it instead.
Examples
1.
잡다 = to catch
잡히다 = to be caught
잡혀 있다 = to be in custody, to have been caught (and is still caught now)
2.
깨다 = to break
깨지다 = to be broken, to be shattered
깨져 있다 = to be in a broken state, somebody broke it (and it is still in that state)
3.
켜다 = to turn on, to switch on
켜지다 = to be turned on, to be switched on
켜져 있다 = somebody turned it on (and it is still on)
4.
쌓다 = to pile things up
쌓이다 = to be piled up
쌓여 있다 = to have been piled up (ex: snow)
5.
열다 = to open
열리다 = to be opened
열려 있다 = to have been opened (and stay open)
* Note that you cannot use this structure with transitive verbs.
Sample Sentences
문이 열려 있어요.
= The door is open!
에어컨이 아직 켜져 있어요.
= The air conditioning is still on.
여기 사과가 한 개 놓여 있어요.
= Somebody put an apple here.
= Here is an apple.
* The difference between, “여기 사과가 한 개 있어요” and “여기 사과가 한 개 놓여
있어요” is that with the second phrase, you are sure that someone placed it there.
이 마을은 산으로 둘러싸여 있어요.
= This town is surrounded by mountains.
파란색으로 칠해져 있는 간판 보여요?
= Do you see the sign there that is painted in blue?
아침에 일어나니까 눈이 쌓여 있었어요.
= When I woke up this morning, I saw that the snow had been piled up.
제가 깬 거 아니에요. 깨져 있었어요.
= I did not break it. It was broken when I saw it.