Spanish to Korean: quiero and quiere change more than a person ending
A speaker’s wish and a report about someone else are not the same construction
Spanish Quiero ir expresses the speaker’s wish to go. Quiere ir can report another person’s wish. The same verb querer changes its person ending, while the following infinitive stays ir. Korean does not always preserve that arrangement by changing a personal ending on one otherwise identical desire expression.
The University of British Columbia’s Korean lesson illustrates 나는 가고 싶어요 for I want to go and 철수씨는 가고 싶어해요 for Ch’ŏlsu wants to go. In this ordinary pattern, the statement about another person uses 싶어해요 rather than the speaker’s 싶어요. The difference concerns whose desire is being expressed, not whether the going is singular or plural.
Spanish quiere may also address the listener directly
¿Quiere ir? can be a polite Spanish question addressed to usted. Its third-person verb form does not necessarily mean that the speaker is asking about somebody absent. Korean questions addressed to the person whose desire is at issue can use the 싶어요 pattern, with suitable politeness. Copying the Spanish grammatical third person into a third-person report could change the question’s participant.
Imagine two lines in a travel conversation: ¿Quiere ir? is addressed to the customer, while Mi hermana quiere ir reports the sister’s preference. Spanish uses quiere in both, but the conversational roles differ. The Korean translation needs to distinguish an invitation or enquiry directed at the listener from a statement describing the sister.
Quiero ir also differs from Quiero que vaya. The latter can express wanting someone else to go, with that person identified in the surrounding context. It must not become an ordinary Korean first-person wish to go oneself simply because quiero appears at the start. The desired action and the person expected to perform it need to remain linked.
Wanting to be something need not use the ordinary copula
Spanish Quiero ser profesor describes an aspiration to be a professor. The UBC lesson illustrates 나는 교수가 되고 싶어요 for that aspiration, using the verb for becoming rather than attaching the desire pattern directly to the copula. The construction does not imply that the speaker currently holds the position.
This matters in a school introduction contrasting Soy profesor with Quiero ser profesor. The first states a present occupation; the second names an intended future role. An output that keeps only the occupation and a polite ending could accidentally turn the student’s ambition into a professional qualification.
These examples do not make Korean desire expressions mechanical tests of grammatical person in every quotation or narrative. They show why the Spanish forms quiero and quiere are only part of the evidence. In an ordinary conversation, establish whether the speaker states a personal wish, asks the listener’s wish, reports another person’s wish, or wants a different person to act before choosing the corresponding Korean construction.
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