Korean Lessons ᚛ Level 7 - Upper-Intermediate Korean #2 (Lessons 181 to 210) ᚛ Lesson 203 - Result of my own action in Korean [-았/었더니]
Result of my own action in Korean [-았/었더니]
In the lesson on -더니, we saw how to link a fact we observed in someone else to what followed. To talk about our own action and what it led to ("I drank a coffee, and as a result I could not sleep"), Korean uses the -았/었더니 structure. Despite appearances, -더니 and -았/었더니 are not simply the present and past versions of the same form: they are used in different situations, which this lesson makes clear.
The result of one’s own action with -았/었더니
The -았/었더니 structure is used in the following manner:
[Speaker’s action: … Past stem]더니 [Result]
Reminder: the past stem -았/었
The first part describes an action that the speaker carried out (the subject is "I", most often left out); the second, what resulted from it for them: a sensation, a state, a consequence. The tense and the speech level are carried by the second part, which is generally in the past tense or describes the present state. In English, we translate with "since I…", "after I…" or "I…, and as a result".
어제 회식 자리에서 술을 너무 많이 마셨더니 머리가 깨질 것 같고 속이 울렁거리는 게 아무래도 좀 쉬어야겠어요.
→ I drank way too much at the team dinner yesterday, and as a result my head feels like it is going to split and I feel nauseous: I really think I need to rest.
주말에 아무것도 하지 않고 집에만 있었더니 너무 지루했어요.
→ Since I stayed home all weekend doing nothing, I was terribly bored.
요즘에 잠도 안 자고 일을 무리하게 했더니 몸이 안 좋아진 것 같아요.
→ Lately I have been overworking without sleeping, and I feel like my health has taken a hit.
오랜만에 전신 마사지를 받았더니 피곤이 싹 풀리고 나른한 게 너무 좋은데?
→ I got a full-body massage for the first time in a long while, and all my tiredness melted away: this drowsy feeling is just wonderful!
너무 오랜만에 산 정상까지 올라갔더니 무릎도 너무 아프고 몸살이 올 것 같아요.
→ I climbed to the top of the mountain for the first time in ages, and now my knees hurt a lot and I feel the aches coming on.
좋아하는 카페의 케이크를 먹었더니 우울하던 기분이 한결 나아졌어요.
→ I ate a cake from my favorite cafe, and my mood, which had been so gloomy, lifted right away.
어제 저녁 시간에 커피를 마셨더니 새벽까지 잠이 안 와서 혼났어.
→ I had a coffee early last evening, and I had a hard time because I could not fall asleep until dawn.
Discovering something after an action
Very often, the second part is not a consequence but what the speaker discovered by doing the action: we go somewhere, we open something, we ask, and we find out. The most natural translation is then "when I…, …".
아침에 일어났더니 밤새 눈이 많이 와 있었어요.
→ When I got up this morning, it had snowed a lot during the night.
오랜만에 고향 친구에게 전화했더니 다음 달에 결혼한다고 했어요.
→ I called a friend from my hometown after all this time, and he told me he was getting married next month.
In this last type of sentence, the subject of the second part is often another person: it is the reaction or the answer that we got.
Someone else’s behavior
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Differences between -더니 and -았/었더니
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Exercises
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