Korean also uses the verbs of existence to express the concept of “to have.” Instead of saying, “[My] friend has a book," ” Korean says, literally, “[As for my] friend, a book exists.” That is:
친구는 책 있습니다.
(The 는 is the topic marker).
See if you can figure out what these sentences mean:
김 선생님은 접시가 있습니다.
이분은 안경이 없습니다.
(By the way, Russian and Hebrew also use a similar method of expressing the concept of “to have.”)
Existence Verbs (part 2)
Sentence Types