-이

Etymology
Cognate with 🇨🇬.

Particle

 * 1) at
 * 2) to

Etymology 1
From, from. Old Korean sources also use and  as a subject marker. It is possible that these are the more conservative forms, and that there was a shift from >  >. However, others have considered ) to be a suffixed form of -i. The forms with *-k are attested later than simple *-i.

John Whitman and Yuko Yanagida speculate an ultimate connection either to the demonstrative ("this") or to the bound noun ("person").

🇨🇬 is believed to be a borrowing from Korean into Japanese.

Usage notes
Korean commonly uses so-called "double subject" constructions, in which a subject-verb or subject-adjective combination is used as the predicate of another subject so that the subject marker appears twice in a single sentence. See the examples below:



As with all Korean particles, 이 is often omitted.



However, it cannot be omitted when the subject is a new topic being introduced into the conversation, or when the subject is being specified to the exclusion of others. The particle is thus obligatory in the sentence below, where is to the exclusion of other things.



Historically, 이 was the only subject-marking particle in the Korean language, and was used for nouns ending in vowels as well. This is true for most Early Modern Korean texts up to the late nineteenth century. In the peripheral spoken in far northeastern Korea and neighboring parts of China, 이 remains the only nominative particle used. It is the only contemporary dialect to preserve such an archaism.

Etymology 2
From, of variable pitch depending on the stem being attached to. Lee Ki-Moon and S. Roberts Ramsey notes that it is "probably from the same etymological source" as the bound noun for "person".

Suffix

 * 1) -er, -or;
 * 1) -er, -or;
 * 1) -er, -or;
 * 1) -er, -or;
 * 1) -er, -or;

Usage notes
The suffix is retained before most particles, but lost before the vocative particle :



For nouns historically formed by the suffix but where the original form has fallen out of widespread use, vocative behavior varies. In general, words where the suffixed form was already dominant in Middle Korean retain the suffix because they are no longer perceived as being multimorphemic, but words where the non-suffixed form was common into Early Modern Korean drop the suffix.



When used with personal names, the suffix connotes that the person is on intimate or familiar terms with the speaker, that they are social equals or inferiors of the speaker, and that the context is not formal. In Korean, referring to a person simply by their given name without a surname or title already implies intimacy, lack of social superiority, and informality. The suffix is thus usually added when using a consonant-final given name in isolation:



The suffix can also be used together with a surname, in which case the association with intimacy or familiarity is weaker and there can be a connotation that the speaker is looking down on the person being referred to.

Etymology 3
From, from.

Suffix

 * 1) -ly;

Usage notes
is the normal adverb-deriving suffix. The forms tend to have a marked or lexicalized meaning.

In Seoul Korean, most adverbs derived by this suffix from adjectives formed with the light verb contract to, rather than *하이:



However, some 하다 adjectives lose the consonant entirely, taking  instead. In the prescriptive standard of Seoul Korean, there are two main exceptions:


 * If the non-하다 element ends in, 이 is always used.
 * If the non-하다 element ends in, 이 is often used.
 * If the non-하다 element ends in, 이 is often used.

In practice, many Seoul speakers will uniformly use 히 for all adverbs where the corresponding 하다 adjective remains current in the language.

For a few adverbs, the 히 form is prescriptively used despite being derived from non-하다 adjectives. However, most of these words have fallen out of use in spoken Korean. Note also that certain adverbs which originate as contractions of longer adverbs may use 히 even when there is no corresponding 하다 adjective for the contraction, and that some Sino-Korean adverbs with 히 have lost their adjectival counterpart entirely.

None of this is the case in many of the non-standard dialects, such as Gyeongsang where is permissible.

Etymology 4
Cognate to Standard Seoul Korean. The interjection grammaticalized into a particle.

Pronunciation

 * Often a change in preceding vowel quality:
 * to
 * to
 * to
 * to
 * to

Particle

 * (This is a quote from the father of, a university student tortured to death by the junta in 1987, during his son's funeral. It became a slogan of the that toppled the regime that year. The translation is from a 2018 article in The Korea Herald.)
 * (This is a quote from the father of, a university student tortured to death by the junta in 1987, during his son's funeral. It became a slogan of the that toppled the regime that year. The translation is from a 2018 article in The Korea Herald.)
 * (This is a quote from the father of, a university student tortured to death by the junta in 1987, during his son's funeral. It became a slogan of the that toppled the regime that year. The translation is from a 2018 article in The Korea Herald.)

Etymology 5
See the main entry.