🇺🇸 Translation
It’s difficult to catch up with the trend,,
📙 Lesson point
Korean sentence pattern ‘(Verb)+기 힘들다’
Hello, everyone! Today, we’re going to practice a very important Korean sentence pattern ‘(Verb)+기 힘들다’. After reading today’s post, not only will you be able to learn how to say “It’s difficult to do ~” in Korean, but you’ll also understand how the pattern is grammatically formed. Moreover, we’ll look at the actual expression that Dokyeom of Seventeen used for his Instagram post together. Let’s begin.
Definition of the adjective ‘힘들다’
힘들다 = to cost a lot of energy and strength = to be difficult to do something, to be hard to endure something = to be burdensome, to be tiring, to be exhausting = to not be in a favorable situation to do something
First, let’s look at the Korean adjective ‘힘들다’. It is an adjective that means ‘to be exhausting, to be difficult to handle’. Here, ‘힘’ is a noun that means ‘strength, force, energy’, whereas ‘들다’ is a verb that means ‘to cost something, to take up something’. Hence, the literal translation of “힘들다” is: ‘to cost a lot of energy and strength’, or ‘to take up a lot of energy’.
힘들다 (to be exhausting, to cost a lot of energy) = 힘 (energy) + 들다 (to cost something)
Practicing ‘(Verb) +기 힘들다’ pattern
Now, let’s talk about how to use this word in today’s expression. If you want to say “It is difficult to ~ (do something)”, then you need to decide the verb that you want to use, and change the Korean verb into a “(Verb stem) +기 힘들다” form. The original form of Korean verbs mostly end with “-다.” All you have to do is remove “-다” and add “-기 힘들다” to the verb stem. Let’s look at some examples.
Example with the Korean verb ‘하다’ (to do)
| 하다 | to do (original verb) |
| 하기 힘들다 | to be difficult to do something (sentence pattern applied) |
| 하기 힘들어 | It’s difficult to do it (sentence pattern applied + conversational form) |
Example with the Korean verb ‘버티다’ (to endure)
| 버티다 | to endure (original verb) |
| 버티기 힘들다 | to be hard to endure something (sentence pattern applied) |
| 버티기 힘들어 | It’s hard for me to take it anymore (sentence pattern applied + conversational form) |
Example with the Korean verb ‘말하다’ (to say)
| 말하다 | to say (original verb) |
| 말하기 힘들다 | to be hard to say something (sentence pattern applied) |
| 말하기 힘들어 | It’s difficult to say / It’s hard to tell (sentence pattern applied + conversational form) |
What does ‘유행을 따라가다’ mean?
Now, let’s look at the expression that means ‘to catch up with the trend’. ‘유행’ is a noun that means ‘trend’. The verb here is ‘따라가다’, and it means ‘to follow something, to catch up with something’. Hence, ‘유행을 따라가다’ means: ‘to follow the trend’, ‘to catch up with the trend’.
For those of you who don’t know basic Korean grammar yet, the word ‘을’ that is attached at the end of the word ‘유행’ (trend) is called ‘object particle’ or ‘object marker’ in Korean. It is a grammar particle that is used to indicate which word functions as the object in the sentence. Object markers are often omitted when it is quite clear which word the object in the sentence is.
In conclusion, ‘유행 따라가기 힘들다’ means…
유행 따라가기 힘들다 = 유행 + 따라가다 + -기 힘들다 = (trend) + (to catch up with) + (It is hard to ~) = It’s difficult to catch up with the trend
Adding up what we have learned in today’s post so far, the verb ‘따라가다’ (to follow, to catch up with) used with the sentence pattern ‘(Verb)+기 힘들다’ (to be difficult to ~) will make ‘따라가기 힘들다’ (to be difficult to catch up with, to be difficult to follow). Then what was so difficult for Dokyeom to follow? It was ‘유행’ (trend) these days. Haha, so this Instagram post is Dokyeom’s cute complaint that catching up with the new selfie trend is so exhausting.