The little shortcuts native speakers use constantly
Textbooks teach you 것이에요, 것입니다, 것을 — but in real conversation no one says any of those in full. They contract: 거예요, 겁니다, 걸. They squeeze copulas: 이에요 → 예요 after a vowel. They drop subjects, drop particles, and reach for filler-particles like 저기요 ('excuse me') and 잠깐만요 ('just a moment'). This lesson is the survival kit for sounding like a person in Korean rather than a textbook — listening to dramas and K-pop without these patterns is impossible, and your own speech will sound stilted without them.
것 → 거: the everyday contraction
것 ('thing / fact') is the workhorse noun for nominalizing. In speech it almost always shrinks to 거: • 것이에요 → 거예요 ('it is the case that…') • 것입니다 → 겁니다 • 것을 → 걸 ('that thing', object) • 것이 → 게 ('the thing is…') • 것은 → 건 • 것이다 → 거다 So when a learner says 갈 것이에요 ('I'll go'), spoken Korean is 갈 거예요 every time. 이게 뭐예요? ('What's this thing?') is 이것이 + 뭐예요? contracted.
Copula contractions: 이에요 / 예요
The copula -이다 has two polite forms depending on the previous syllable: • After a consonant: -이에요 (학생이에요) • After a vowel: -예요 (친구예요, 의자예요) Not a separate word — the 이 disappears after a vowel. In writing both exist; in speech you barely hear the difference. Past stays -이었어요 / -였어요 with the same vowel rule.
-잖아 ≈ 'it's that...'
Closely related to last lesson's -잖아요, but in casual narration -잖아 also works as the equivalent of English 'it's that…' or 'see…' — softly explanatory, not always presupposing shared knowledge: 나 어제 영화 봤거든. 근데 진짜 재미있었잖아. 그래서 또 보려고. ('I saw a movie yesterday, see. And it was really fun, so I'm gonna see it again.') In this register -잖아 flows naturally as a connector, not just a 'duh' marker.
Soft openers: 저기요 / 잠깐만요
저기요 literally means 'over there' but is the everyday way to flag a stranger's attention — a shopkeeper, a waiter, someone you need to ask for directions. NOT 실례합니다 (which exists but is overly stiff for casual settings). 저기요, 이거 얼마예요? ('Excuse me, how much is this?'). 잠깐만요 ('just a moment'). Use to ask someone to wait — on the phone, in a queue, or when you're about to remember something. Casual: 잠깐만. Both 저기요 and 잠깐만요 are conversational glue you'll hear in every drama scene.
Other tiny things you'll hear
그냥 ('just / no reason') — defaulting answer when you don't want to explain: 왜? — 그냥. ('Why? — Just because.') 아무튼 / 어쨌든 ('anyway') — pivots to a new point. 진짜 / 정말 ('really') — 진짜 is more colloquial, 정말 more polite. 좀 ('a little') — sentence-softener: 물 좀 주세요 ('please give me some water'). 좀 also means 'kind of': 좀 피곤해요 ('I'm a bit tired'). 막 ('like, randomly') — discourse particle: 그냥 막 갔어 ('I just kinda went'). Hyper-casual. Dropping particles: in fast speech, 나는 → 난 → just 나, and 이/가 often disappears: 이거 뭐야? ('what's this?') has no particle at all.
