{"id":29,"date":"2022-12-08T23:32:05","date_gmt":"2022-12-08T23:32:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.moonbop-bebop.com\/?p=29"},"modified":"2022-12-08T23:41:44","modified_gmt":"2022-12-08T23:41:44","slug":"why-do-we-use-%ea%b0%80-when-it-rains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.moonbop-bebop.com\/?p=29","title":{"rendered":"Why do we use -\uac00 when it rains?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I was recently writing something about topic-marking particles (\uc740\/\ub294) and subject-marking particles (\uc774\/\uac00), and I suddenly started wondering why we almost always use -\uc774\/\uac00 with rain and snow. When it\u2019s raining, why do we say, \u201c\ube44\uac00<\/font><\/strong> \uc640\uc694\u201d and not \u201c\ube44\ub294<\/font><\/strong> \uc640\uc694\u201d? When it\u2019s snowing, why does \u201c\ub208\uc774<\/font><\/strong> \uc640\uc694\u201d sound natural but \u201c\ub208\uc740<\/font><\/strong> \uc640\uc694\u201d sounds weird? I thought about this a lot and came up with some possibly wacky personal speculation. (I do this a lot, the wacky speculation thing. I\u2019m insatiably curious!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think maybe this is because our conversational focus is really unlikely to be the rain or snow itself. The topic marker -\uc740\/\ub294 generally serves a couple of primary purposes: (1) setting the topic of conversation or (2) showing comparison or contrast. When we start talking about a rainy day, it might seem like we should say, \u201c\ube44\ub294 \uc640\uc694,\u201d because we\u2019re talking about rain, right? Isn\u2019t rain our topic?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But once I thought about it, I realized that people don\u2019t tend to really focus on talking about the rain as a phenomenon\u2014instead, they\u2019re probably focusing on the fact that the ground will be wet, the picnic will be canceled, they like the sound against the windows, driving will be dangerous, or whatever. When you\u2019re talking about rain, you\u2019re usually talking about the effect<\/strong> it\u2019s having on you or the world, not starting a conversation about the actual concept or physical characteristics of rain. So rain isn\u2019t your actual topic<\/strong> \u2026 it\u2019s just the cause of events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot of teachers suggest thinking of the topic marker as implying \u201cas for\u2026<\/em>\u201d (like \u201c\uc800\ub294 \ud53c\uc790\ub97c \uc88b\uc544\ud574\uc694\u201d meaning \u201cAs for me,<\/em> I like pizza\u201d), but if we did this with my rain example, we would have \u201c\ube44\ub294 \uc640\uc694\u201d meaning something like \u201cAs for the rain<\/em>, it comes,\u201d which implies a kind of focus on the rain that doesn\u2019t sound at all natural. Like we\u2019re comparing the rain to other things that haven’t come, or something. Sounds funky to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, when we say \u201c\ube44\uac00 \uc640\uc694,\u201d the rain is usually new information which we haven\u2019t mentioned in previous sentences, and new information usually merits the subject marker -\uc774\/\uac00. Maybe if we were afterward going to continue to talk about the characteristics of the rain itself (rather than the environment in which the rain is falling or the effect the rain is having), then we might use the topic marker, but I haven\u2019t seen it often with reference to weather.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I got curious and looked at the lyrics for BTS\u2019s song \u201cRain,\u201d because I figured an entire song about rain might have some examples of the topic marker -\ub294 being used with \ube44, and I think the song\u2019s lyrics contain some useful examples of nuances that the topic marker can bring. In most places in the song, \ube44 takes the subject marker -\uac00 or takes no marker at all. But here are a couple of examples of lines where \ube44 takes the topic marker -\ub294:<\/p>\n\n\n\n