The four pre-final endings¶

We saw earlier that one can insert -았/었- into a verb to make it past tense. This is one example of a pre-final ending (선어말어미), which sits between the stem of the verb and the ending.

Usually in Korean a lot of grammatical categories are enormous. Pre-final endings are a rare exception: there are only four still actually used¹ and we can cover them all right now.

Past tense (-ㅆ/았/었-)¶

Future tense (-겠-)¶

Subject honorific (-시/으시-)¶

Retrospective (-더-)¶