Lesson 20: Well and Poorly: 잘 and 못

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Vocabulary
Introduction

잘하다: To do something well
잘: Well

못하다: To do something poorly
못: Poorly
~지 못하다

잘못

 

Vocabulary

Click on the English word to see information and examples of that word in use (you probably won’t be able to understand the grammar within the sentences at this point, but it is good to see as you progress through your learning).

A PDF file neatly presenting these words and extra information can be found here.

You can try to find all of the words from this lesson, and all of the words from every lesson in Unit 1 in a package of twenty five Word Searches.

Nouns:
교수 = professor

주인 = master/owner/proprietor

잘못 = mistake/fault

기온 = temperature

거울 = mirror

가루 = powder

근육 = muscle

어둠 = darkness

기본 = basic/basics

사고 = accident

교통 = traffic

이상 = a noun to indicate that something is more than something else

Verbs:
Conjugate 잘하다 = to do something well

Conjugate 못하다 = to do something poorly

Conjugate 수영하다 = to swim

Conjugate 대우하다 = to treat somebody

Conjugate 퇴직하다 = to retire

Conjugate 접수하다 = to receive (an application)

Conjugate 씹다 = to chew

Conjugate 통역하다 = to interpret

Conjugate 번역하다 = to translate

Conjugate 젓다 = to stir

Conjugate 늘리다 = to gain, to improve, to increase

Conjugate 빠지다 = to fall into

Conjugate 빠져나오다 = to escape, to come out of

Conjugate 빠져나가다 = to escape, to go out of

Conjugate 헷갈리다 = to be confused

Passive Verbs:
Conjugate 늘다 = to be gained, improved, increased

Adjectives:
Conjugate 둥글다 = to be round, to be spherical

Conjugate 어둡다 = to be dark

Adverbs and Other Words:
잘 = well

못 = poorly

님 = adds respect to person’s name or position

또는 = or

세 = a counter for years of age

꼭 = surely/definitely

물론 = of course

For help memorizing these words, try using our mobile app.

You might also want to try listening to all of the words on loop with this Vocabulary Practice video.

 

Introduction

Until now, you have not learned how to say “I am good at something/I do something well” or “I am bad at something/I do something poorly.” In this lesson, you will learn about the words 잘하다 (to do something well) and 못하다 (to do something poorly). 못하다 is very hard to understand perfectly, so I will ease you in by introducing you to 잘하다 first.
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잘하다: To do something well

The main meaning of 잘하다 is “to do something well.” To use 잘하다, simply place a noun in a sentence with 잘하다 as the verb.

This is easy to do with 하다 verbs (for example, 수영하다 and 공부하다) because to make a noun all you need to do is remove 하다 from those words. I discuss making non-하다 verbs into nouns in Lesson 26, but the principal is the same for any noun form of a verb.  All you need to do is:

나는 (noun form of verb)을/를 잘하다. For example:

나는 수영을 잘해 = I am good at swimming
저 학생은 공부를 잘해 = That student studies well
우리 애기는 말을 잘해요 = Our baby speaks well
저는 야구를 잘해요 = I play baseball well

잘하다 is a verb, but now we need to talk about “잘,” which is an adverb.

 

잘: Well

Just like 잘하다, you can use the word 잘 in sentences to indicate that one does something well. Usually, when you remove 하다 from a word, the word without 하다 becomes a noun. In this case, removing 하다 from 잘 does not make 잘 a noun. Instead, it is an adverb. The only reason this is important is so that you know that you can use 잘 in sentences just like other adverbs, in this case to mean “(to do something) well.” It is essentially the same as “잘하다,” but used slightly different. For example:

그 주인은 고객님들을 잘 대우해요 = That owner treats the customers well
나는 어젯밤에 잘 잤어 = I slept well last night

When I first learned about 잘하다 and 잘, I was trying to understand if these two sentences were the same:

나는 공부를 잘해 = I study well
나는 잘 공부해 = I study well

The answer: essentially, but not entirely.

The difference is so subtle that you don’t really need to worry about it. However, when I learned this, I worried about it, so I think maybe you should worry about it too. The reason I say “don’t worry about it” is because now when I speak I can’t really distinguish the difference in meaning. The only way I could tell the difference is referring back to my old notes from 5 years ago. Nonetheless, there is a subtle difference:

나는 공부를 잘한다 = I study well, or
“나는 (noun)을 잘한다” means that, in general, your ability to do something is good. However,

나는 잘 공부한다 = I study well, or
“나는 잘 (verb)다” means that you can study well because of some situation (for example, maybe you have a test coming up and you are studying really hard because of that situation).

But really, don’t get too caught up on the difference between the two. Especially since sometimes they look and sound almost exactly the same. If you separated 공부 and 하다 in the second example, you would get:

나는 공부를 잘 해 = I study well, which sounds (and almost looks) exactly the same as:
나는 공부를 잘해 = I study well

Anyways, don’t worry about it too much.

 

You already know the word 잘생기다 means “handsome.” That word is actually 잘 and 생기다 put together. 생기다 has a lot of meanings, but putting 잘 and 생기다 together, it sort of means “to come out well.” The opposite is true for 못생기다 (to be ugly).

 

Always remember to not translate directly from English to Korean, as there are so many things that are not 100% the same in both languages. For example, in English, we would never say “I don’t know well,” but in Korean, it is very common to say:

저는 잘 모르겠어요* = I don’t know (well)
*Also notice that the future tense 모르다 is used here. Even though it is in the present, 모르겠다 is used very commonly to indicate that you don’t know something – Even though it directly translates to “I will not know.”

 

못하다: To do something poorly

Alright, this is where it gets hard. 잘하다 was easy. Let’s do this step by step.

First of all, 못하다 has the opposite meaning of 잘하다 – so it can be used to indicate that one generally is poor at something. For example:

나는 수영을 못해 = I am bad at swimming
저 학생은 공부를 못해 = That student does not study well

The difference between 못하다 and 못 is the same as the difference between 잘하다 and 잘. When you say a sentence like “나는 수영을 못해” it means that in general your ability to swim is bad. Because of this, you need to be careful about the type of verb you are using in this situation. For example, you couldn’t really use the verb “to eat” in this situation, because that would mean that “in general, my ability to eat is bad.” Instead, what you would probably want to say is that “I CAN eat, but because of some situation, I can’t really eat right now.” That is when you need to use 못 instead of 못하다.

 

못: Poorly

Using 못하다 and understanding the meaning it creates is quite simple, especially if you can understand how 잘하다 is used. If you use the adverb 못, the meaning depends on the situation. Here are two simple examples we can look at:

저는 어제 못 잤어요
저는 어제 시험을 못 봤어요

This is where it gets unnecessarily confusing. Both of those sentences could have two meanings.

The first example:
저는 어제 못 잤어요 could mean either of the following:

I didn’t sleep well last night because of some situation, or
I didn’t sleep last night because something prevented me from sleeping

The second example:
저는 어제 시험을 못 봤어요 could mean either of the following:

I did poorly on the exam yesterday because of some situation, or
I didn’t write the exam yesterday because something prevented me from doing so

(My translations of “… One didn’t … because something prevented him/her from …” is often simply translated to “One couldn’t” or “One can’t.” These English terms are complex, and might be related to one not doing something because something prevented them or related to one’s ability. Another way to say “one couldn’t” or “one can’t” in Korean is by using ~ㄹ/을 수 없다 , which I discuss in Lesson 45).

Confusing? Let me say this again. When you put 못 in a sentence, it can indicate that one does something poorly (or not well) OR that one does not do something because something prevented him/her from doing it. When it has the second meaning (“I didn’t do”) it is the result of some situation preventing you.

I want to take a minute to distinguish this from other negative sentences – specifically using 안 or ~지 않다 which you learned in Lesson 8. When you use 안 or ~지 않다, there is no deeper meaning that “something prevented you from doing the action.” For example, if I said:

저는 어제 시험을 안 봤어요, or
저는 어제 시험을 보지 않았어요

I am just saying that I didn’t write the exam yesterday – as if yesterday specifically was not the day that I was supposed to write the exam anyway (or something like that). Why would I write the exam when it is not the exam day? Of course I wouldn’t. Nothing is preventing me from writing the exam. It’s just not the day to write the exam. It’s also possible that I just didn’t do the exam because I didn’t want to. Either way, nothing is preventing me from doing it, I just didn’t do it.

However, if I say:

저는 어제 시험을 못 봤어요

It probably was the day to write the exam, but something prevented me from writing it. The thing that prevented me from writing it could be anything – it could have been that I had to go to a party with my wife, or it could of been that I had explosive diarrhea. Either way, both of those things (especially the latter) would prevent me from writing the exam.

——————–

In order to explain this further, I can explain a very common mistake that English speakers make when speaking Korean.

You don’t know how to ask questions yet (you’ll learn that in the next lesson), but imagine if somebody asks you

“Did you hear what I say?” (내 말을 들었어?)

English speakers learning Korean often respond with:

아니. 안 들었어.

However, if you say that, it’s kind of like you are specifically/purposely trying not to hear what the person said. Instead, you obviously can hear, but something prevented you from hearing the person. Maybe it was the loud TV, maybe it was the motorcycle driving by, or maybe it was your explosive diarrhea. Either way, something prevented you from hearing the person, so you should say:

아니. 못 들었어. = No, I didn’t (couldn’t) hear (you)

——————–

But, how can you distinguish the difference between somebody saying “I did something poorly” and “I didn’t do something”? There are three ways I can teach you:

 

 

잘 못
If you really want to stress that you do something poorly, you can include 잘 before 못. This specifically indicates that you “don’t do something well” and removes the ambiguity of “I didn’t”:

저는 어제 시험을 잘 못 봤어요 = I didn’t do good on the exam yesterday

The word being used
Sometimes, the word being used makes it clear which meaning you are trying to express. For example, if I said:

저는 어제 학교에 못 갔어요, This could have two meanings:

1) I didn’t go to school yesterday because of some situation
2) I didn’t go to school well yesterday

Which one of those two makes sense? In situations like this, it is easy to figure out which meaning is being used. Is it possible to “go somewhere well?” I don’t think so.

A perfect real-world example of this is something that my co-worker said to me once. The school I work at was in the process of buying my plane ticket back home, and it happened to be really expensive (like, really expensive). My co-worker always wanted to go to Canada, but when she heard how much my plane ticket was, she said to herself “캐나다에 못 가겠다.” The meaning of this sentence is not “she will go to Canada poorly” but rather “she can’t/won’t go to Canada because of some situation” (the ticket being too expensive).

 

Situation
Sometimes you just need to think about the context of the sentence to understand the meaning completely. For example, if you already knew for sure that a friend wrote the exam, and they later said “시험을 못 봤어요” – the sentence could only have one meaning (because you already knew that he/she wrote the exam).

 

Let’s look at some examples. If somebody said:
저는 밥을 못 먹어요

This could technically mean two things. It could mean:

1. That the person can’t eat (well)
2. That the person won’t eat because of some situation (most likely because he/she is full/doesn’t like that particular food, etc…)

In this case, the first possibility does not make sense because everybody (99.9% of the time) has the ability to eat. Therefore, this person is expressing that he/she is not going to eat because of some situation that is causing him/her to not want to eat.

Another example:
저는 답을 잘 못 썼어요

This sentence could really only mean one thing. Because of the use of “잘,” we know that the speaker is expressing that he/she did not do something well. Therefore, the sentence above translates to “I didn’t answer well.

There is still another way that 못/못하다 can be used to have yet another similar meaning to what has been described so far.

 

~지 못하다

One more thing about 못하다. Similar in structure to ~지 않다, you can also write ~지 못하다 to have the same meaning as 못. For example:

저는 어제 못 잤어요 AND
저는 어제 자지 못했어요 have the same meaning (I didn’t sleep [well] last night)

Remember that 못 and ~지 못하다 have the same meaning, which is subtly different than 를 못하다:

저는 어제 못 공부했어요 = I didn’t study well yesterday/I couldn’t study yesterday
저는 어제 공부하지 못했어요 = I didn’t study well yesterday/I couldn’t study yesterday
저는 공부를 못해요 = I am bad at studying

 

잘못

To make all of this even more confusing, the word 잘못 (with no space between 잘 and 못) has a different meaning. 잘못 means “mistake.” This word would normally be an easy word to deal with. However, it is more difficult than it needs to be because 잘못 and 잘 못 have two different meanings. 잘못 can be used like this:

그것은 제 잘못이었어요 = That was my fault/my mistake

Normally when you say “my _____” you use 저의 or 나의. However, some nouns prefer to have 제 and 내 before them instead of 저의/나의. 잘못 is one of these nouns. Another example is 제/내 생각 (instead of 저의/나의 생각) meaning “my thought/my opinion/what I think.”

 

잘 and 못 with Comparatives and Superlatives

One final thing before I finish. In the previous lesson, you learned about using ~보다 and 가장/제일 to make comparative and superlative sentences. The concepts you learned in this lesson are very commonly used alongside ~보다 or 가장/제일 in sentences to say that somebody can do something better/worse, or do something the best/worst. Some examples:

Comparative Sentences:
우리 아들은 친구들보다 축구를 더 잘해요 = Our (my) son is better than (his) friends at soccer
그 교수는 다른 교수들보다 수업을 더 잘해요 = That professor teaches classes better than other professors
저는 수영을 작년보다 더 잘해요 = I am better at swimming than last year

Superlative Sentences:
우리 아들은 축구를 가장 잘해요 = Our (my) son is the best at soccer
그 교수는 수업을 제일 잘해요 = That professor teaches classes the best (is the best at teaching classes)

저는 축구를 제일 못해요 = I play soccer the worst
저는 수영을 제일 못해요 = I swim the worst

Again, in most situations, these sentences would sound more natural with the use of other grammatical principles. For example, to say “I am the one who plays soccer the worst” or “Of all people, I play soccer the worst.” To be able to wrap your head around those sentences, you’ll need to read/understand the grammar taught in Lessons 26 and 33 respectively.

That’s it for this lesson!

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