Korean Lessons ᚛ Level 5 - Intermediate Korean #2 (Lessons 121 to 150) ᚛ Lesson 139 - It's not ... but it's ... in Korean [아니라] [-(으)ㄴ/는 것(이) 아니다]

It's not ... but it's ... in Korean [아니라] [-(으)ㄴ/는 것(이) 아니다]

In this course: ㄴ 거 아니다 / ㄴ 게 아니다 / ㄴ 것이 아니다 / 아니라

In the previous lesson, we saw the -(으)ㄴ/는 거다 form. In this lesson, we are going to see different uses of the negation of this structure.

The negative of -(으)ㄴ/는 거다

The negative version of the -(으)ㄴ/는 거다 structure is the following: 
[Adjectival form] 것(이) 아니다

As a reminder, as we saw in the lesson on demonstrative adjectives in Korean:

• 것 can be shortened to 거
• 것이 can be shortened to 게

수영을 하고 싶은 게 아니에요.
→ It’s not that I want to swim.

그건 내가 한 거 아니야.
→ That’s not something I did.

제 꿈은 소방관이 되는 것이 아닙니다.
→ My dream is not to become a firefighter.

Giving advice

아니라

아니라 with nouns

아니라 is a word that allows us to link two parts of the same sentence while differentiating them, in the following manner:
[Part 1] 아니라 [Different part 2]

In English, this structure could be translated as "It’s not ... but it’s ...".

그는 치과 의사가 아니라 수의사잖아.
→ You know he’s not a dentist but a veterinarian.

늑대가 아니라 늑대처럼 생긴 개입니다.
→ It’s not a wolf but a dog that looks like a wolf.

아니라 with verbs

Summary table of structure

Exercises

This printable eBook teaches you Korean writing and includes more than 1,000 Korean vocabulary words divided into 40 categories. Each word comes with audio pronunciation recorded by native Korean speakers (no AI)!

On top of that, you’ll also get access to an online vocabulary learning tool based on the scientifically proven Leitner spaced repetition method.

Learn more

Comments (0)