To make an imperative form in Korean and ask someone to do something, you need to conjugate the verbs according to the following rules. 

Verb stem ends in a Vowel: add -세요.

Verb stem ends in a Consonant: -으세요.

Examples: 조용히 말하세요. Please speak quietly.

창문을 닫으세요. Close the window.

when you want to ask someone not to do something, we put ‘-지 마세요.’ to word stems.

‘마세요’ has the meaning of ‘do not’. In this case, it does not matter whether the verb stem ends in a vowel or a consonant.

Whether the verb stem ends in a vowel or a consonant, “-지 마세요” is used.

Examples:

큰 소리로 말하지 마세요. Please do not speak loudly.

비밀번호를 바꾸지 마세요. Please do not change the password.

Korean is a SOV language, meaning the basic language structure is:

Subject + Object + Verb

Japanese, Mongolian and Turkish are also SOV languages for example.

English is a SVO language: subject + verb + object

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Learn more about Korean sentence structures here.

Here are the 3 most basic Korean sentence structure:

#1 || Subject + Verb

#2 || Subject + Object + Verb

#3 || Subject + Noun / Adjective

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Learn more about Korean sentence structures here.

Expressing ‘not’. For verbs and adjectives. Add ‘안’ or ‘-지 않아요’ in front of them.

Example: 지수는 초콜릿을 좋아하지 않아요.

Expressing ‘cannot’. For verbs only. Add 못’or ‘-지 못해요’ in front of the verb.

Example: 저는 수영을 못 해요.

Expressing ‘do not know’. The word ‘to know’ in Korean is ‘알다’. However, we rarely apply the methods of case 1 and case 2 for this word. Instead, we use the word ‘몰라요’

Example: 나는 그녀의 연락처를 몰라요.

Expressing ‘not have’. When we make a sentence to talk about the absence of something, we would use ‘없어요’.

Example: 공원에 사람들이 거의 없어요.

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Learn more about the Korean negative form here.

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