Korean Feeling Verbs: How -아/어하다 Turns Feelings into Actions

What you'll learn

• Convert 12 or more feeling adjectives into -아/어하다 verbs, including irregular ones.
• Choose between 개가 무서워요 and 개를 무서워해요 for the same idea.
• Say how a friend feels without sounding as if you can read minds.
• Turn 가고 싶어요 ("I want to go") into 가고 싶어 해요 ("he wants to go").

Prerequisites: you know common feeling words from Korean emotion adjectives and the verb/adjective split from verbs vs adjectives. Time: about 30 minutes.

What Does -아/어하다 Do to a Feeling Adjective?

-아/어하다 turns a feeling adjective, which states a feeling from the inside, into a verb that describes the feeling as visible behaviour or as an attitude toward something. 슬프다 means "to be sad"; 슬퍼하다 means "to feel sad and show it, to grieve". The adjective reports; the verb observes.

English has a small version of the same split: "afraid" is an adjective (I am afraid of dogs), while "fear" is a verb with an object (I fear dogs). Korean applies the split to almost every feeling word.

The change does two jobs. First, it lets you describe someone else's feelings naturally: 친구가 슬퍼해요, "My friend is sad (and it shows)." Second, it changes the grammar of the sentence: the cause of the feeling stops being the subject and becomes an object marked with 을/를. 좋다 and 좋아하다 are the pair every beginner meets first: 사과가 좋아요 and 사과를 좋아해요 both mean "I like apples".

This is a vocabulary-building rule as well as a grammar point. Once you know 20 feeling adjectives, you have 20 verbs for free. The same pattern is covered from the grammar side in -아/어 하다 emotion verbs. The next section shows how to build the verbs.

Forming -아/어하다 Verbs

Take the polite present of the adjective, remove 요 and add 하다. Because the polite present already contains any vowel harmony and irregular change, you never have to apply those rules a second time.

Worked Example: 무섭다 → 무서워하다

1. Start with the adjective. 무섭다, "to be scary, to be afraid".
2. Make the polite present. 무섭다 is ㅂ-irregular, so 무섭 + 어요 → 무서워요.
3. Remove 요. 무서워요 → 무서워.
4. Add 하다. 무서워 + 하다 → 무서워하다, "to be afraid of, to fear".
5. Conjugate the new verb as a 하다 verb. 무서워하다 → 무서워해요, 무서워했어요.

You'll know it worked when the syllable before 하다 is exactly the polite present without 요. The usual mistake at step 2 is to start from the stem instead (무섭하다), which skips the irregular change. Step 5 uses the ordinary 하다 to 해요 rule.

The two -하다 adjectives at the bottom give a double 해: 미안해하다, 궁금해하다. It looks odd, but it follows the rule exactly.

Two verbs in the table have gone further than the rest. 좋아하다 and 싫어하다 are everyday words in their own right, listed as separate dictionary entries with the plain meanings "like" and "dislike", and Koreans use them freely about themselves: 저는 커피를 좋아해요. Most other -아/어하다 verbs, such as 슬퍼하다 or 부끄러워하다, still carry the sense of a feeling seen from outside. With the forms in hand, the next section explains the change in particles.

Why Do I Say 개가 무서워요 and 개를 무서워해요?

Both sentences mean "I'm afraid of dogs", but the grammar differs because 무섭다 is an adjective and 무서워하다 is a verb. An adjective describes its subject, so the scary thing, 개, takes the subject particle 가. A verb acts on an object, so the feared thing takes the object particle 를.

For your own feelings, both versions are correct, with a slight difference. The adjective sentence reports how you feel now, from the inside. The verb sentence sounds more like a general description of your attitude, as someone else might describe you. In everyday speech about yourself, the adjective is more common, except with 좋아하다 and 싫어하다, which are standard for likes and dislikes. The next section turns to the person whose feelings you are describing.

How Do You Talk about Someone Else's Feelings?

Use the -아/어하다 verb: 동생이 슬퍼해요, "My younger sibling is sad." Korean grammar treats a feeling adjective as a report from inside the speaker's own mind. Stating someone else's inner feeling with the bare adjective, as in 동생이 슬퍼요, sounds as if you can read their mind, so a plain statement about another person usually takes the verb.

The rule is a strong tendency, not an absolute law, and there are three natural alternatives when you are guessing rather than observing.

Two common situations do use the bare adjective about another person. In a question to the listener, you ask about their own feeling: 슬퍼요?, "Are you sad?" In stories and novels, a narrator may describe a character's mind directly: 그는 슬펐다. Feeling words beyond this page are collected in Korean emotions vocabulary. Some feeling adjectives are irregular, and the next section shows what happens to them.

Irregular Stems Carry Over

Every irregular change in the adjective carries over into the verb, because the verb is built from the polite present. You do not learn a new rule; you reuse the one from the adjective.

• ㅂ irregular → 워: 무섭다 → 무서워하다, 귀엽다 → 귀여워하다, 그립다 → 그리워하다.
• ㅡ drop: 기쁘다 → 기뻐하다, 슬프다 → 슬퍼하다, 아프다 → 아파하다.
• 하다 adjectives → 해하다: 미안하다 → 미안해하다, 지루하다 → 지루해하다.
• ㄹ stems stay whole before 어: 힘들다 → 힘들어하다.

The new verb is always a regular 하다 verb, whatever the adjective was. 무서워하다 gives 무서워해요, 무서워했어요 and 무서워하는, with no further changes. The verb status also opens up patterns that adjectives cannot use, covered next.

Patterns Only the Verb Can Take

Some sentence patterns need a verb, so only the -아/어하다 form can fill them. Three of these matter for feelings.

너무 슬퍼하지 마세요 is a standard comforting phrase; the adjective version, 슬프지 마세요, is not used. The modifier row explains a frequent pair: 좋은 음식 means "good food", while 좋아하는 음식 means "food I like". The same verb trick applies to wanting, as the next section shows.

How Do You Say What Someone Else Wants?

Add 하다 to -고 싶다 in the same way: 가고 싶어요 ("I want to go") becomes 가고 싶어 해요 ("he wants to go"). -고 싶다 behaves like a feeling adjective, a wish reported from inside, so another person's wish usually takes the -아/어하다 form.

The standard spelling puts a space before 하다 here, 싶어 해요, because -아/어하다 follows a whole phrase (가고 싶다), while 슬퍼하다 is written as one word. The full "want" grammar, with -고 싶다 tenses and polite forms, is in Korean want to grammar. The next section lists the mistakes this lesson prevents.

Common Mistakes

Four habits cause most errors with Korean feeling verbs.

• Keeping 이/가 with the verb. Wrong: 개가 무서워해요 for "I fear dogs" (it actually means "The dog is scared"). Right: 개를 무서워해요.
• Building from the stem. Wrong: 무섭하다, 슬프하다. Right: 무서워하다, 슬퍼하다.
• Stating another person's feeling with the bare adjective. Unnatural: 엄마가 기뻐요. Natural: 엄마가 기뻐해요.
• Using -아/어하다 with non-feeling adjectives. Wrong: 커하다, 빨개하다. -아/어하다 is for feelings and sensations.

An honest limit: the line between "feeling" and "other" adjectives is fuzzy. Pairs such as 슬퍼하다 and 좋아하다 are everyday words, while some rarer adjectives sound odd with -아/어하다, so a dictionary is the safest check for less common pairs.

Practice: 10 Items

Items 1–5: make the -아/어하다 verb in the polite present. Items 6–10: choose the natural sentence. Answers follow.

1. 기쁘다
2. 부럽다
3. 싫다
4. 궁금하다
5. 외롭다
6. "My friend likes K-pop": 친구가 케이팝이 좋아요 / 친구가 케이팝을 좋아해요
7. "I'm sad" (right now): 저는 슬퍼요 / 저는 슬퍼해요
8. "Don't be afraid": 무섭지 마세요 / 무서워하지 마세요
9. "My friend wants to eat": 친구가 먹고 싶어요 / 친구가 먹고 싶어 해요
10. "Children like snow": 아이들이 눈을 좋아해요 / 아이들이 눈이 좋아해요

Answer key

If you got 8 or more right, you can use the pattern with new words. Errors on items 6 and 10 mean the particle swap needs another look.

What Should You Learn after Korean Feeling Verbs?

With Korean feeling verbs in place, move on to Korean physical state adjectives such as 배고프다, 피곤하다 and 춥다, several of which also take -아/어하다 (추워하다, 피곤해하다). To review the adjectives these verbs come from, return to Korean emotion adjectives.

What this page does not cover. It does not cover -아/어지다 ("to become": 슬퍼지다) or honorific forms of feeling verbs. About this page. Last updated 2026-10-09. The Korean text on this page was machine-generated and reviewed and signed off by Min-ji Park on 15 October 2026. Forms were cross-checked with the site's rule-based conjugation engine. Romanization follows the Revised Romanization of Korean and is only a learning aid.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between 좋다 and 좋아하다? 좋다 is an adjective, "to be good, to be pleasing", so the liked thing is the subject: 저는 사과가 좋아요. 좋아하다 is a verb, "to like", so the liked thing is the object: 저는 사과를 좋아해요. Both can mean "I like apples". For another person, use 좋아하다: 동생은 사과를 좋아해요.

How do I say "he is sad" in Korean? Say 그 사람은 슬퍼해요, using the verb 슬퍼하다, because you are describing sadness you can see. If you are guessing from his face, say 슬퍼 보여요 ("he looks sad") or 슬픈 것 같아요 ("he seems sad"). If he told you himself, say 슬프대요 ("he says he is sad").

Do all adjectives take -아/어하다? No. -아/어하다 attaches to adjectives of feeling or sensation, such as 기쁘다, 무섭다, 싫다, 아프다 and 귀엽다. Adjectives that describe objects, such as 크다 ("big") or 빨갛다 ("red"), do not take it: 커하다 and 빨개하다 are not words. Some feeling pairs are far more common than others, so check a dictionary for rarer words.

Can I use 슬퍼요 about myself and 슬퍼해요 about myself too? Yes, with a difference in meaning. 저는 슬퍼요 states your feeling right now, from the inside. 저는 그 일을 아직도 슬퍼해요 describes your ongoing reaction to something, as if seen from outside, and needs an object. For a simple "I'm sad", the adjective 슬퍼요 is the natural choice.

Is it 싶어하다 or 싶어 하다? Write it with a space: 가고 싶어 해요. The Korean spelling rules (한글 맞춤법) attach -아/어하다 to a single word, as in 슬퍼하다, but write it with a space when it follows a phrase such as 가고 싶다. In practice you will see 싶어해요 written solid online; the spaced form is the standard one.