In English, when and where would both place at the beginning of a sentence generally.
Can someone please explain the following to me?
1. Hallasan eodie isseoyo? - [where] places after the subject
2. Eonje tougeunhae? - [when] places before the subject
Could the words in line 2 be reversed and still make sense?
Thanks
No you shouldn't reverse the word order.
In example 2 you are asking when "some person" is leaving work right? So I think the "person" (omitted) is the subject, not the final verb "leaving work".
With the exception of adjectives or noun modifying phrases, everything in Korean grammar comes after the subject. The structure is SOV - Subject - Object - Verb (but you probably already know that)
But the simplest sentences will have only a subject and a verb -SV (just like English) Unfortunately the subject is often omitted in Korean when it can be implied by the context, which is often a cause of confusion for students of the language.
해가 떴다 -The sun rose.
언제 떴어? -When did (the sun) rise?
I'm going to assume "tou geun hae" means 퇴근해 (it would be easier for me if you wrote Korean in Hangul)
(너) 언제 퇴근해? Lit: (You) when leave-work do?
Here is an alternative word order that I think is permissible and still makes sense:
(너) 퇴근 언제 해? Lit: (You) leave-work when do?
To make matters more confusing, the words 어디 and 언제 are sometimes used as pronouns in Korean, as in:
어디 있겠지 -It's got to be somewhere. In this case 어디 means "some place" and is not interrogative.
Anyway, the best thing is to just keep on learning the patterns as native speakers say them and the grammatical understanding will become clearer with time.
