Sofie to Korea

I don’t think I will ever stop being amazed at how detailed and nuanced the Korean language really is. Yesterday I was studying how to ask favors using fairly fixed expressions in Korean such as “부탁 하나 있어요”. This lead me to the following example “가게에 가는 김에 우유 좀 사다 줄 수 있어요?”. I immediately thought to myself “What’s with the 사다, shouldn’t it be just 사?” I looked it up online and quickly discovered that this question had been asked multiple times in different language learning forums. Here’s the explanation in brief: 사다 주다 is a shortened version of 사다가 주다 indicating som midaction occurance. It’s all about location, which once again proves how much one can really finetune a sentence to convey an exact meaning in Korean. If I say “오빠, 나 저거 사 줘” I’m implying that I’m within reach of the item that I want my 오빠 to buy for me, whereas uttering “오빠, 나 저거 사다 줘” implies that I cannot see the item, and that I want my 오빠 to buy it for me and then bring it to me. I bet I’ll mess that up more than once in the times to come!