It took me a long time to figure out how to answer the question "how long have you been in Korea?" properly. When I asked koreans how to say "i've been in Korea for 6 months" being the adorable little Koreans they are and rather than translating the meaning of the sentence, they translated the words themselve, and gave me: "한국에 6개월 동안 살았어요"han-guk-e 6gae weol dong-an sa-rass-eo-yo translating the "for" as "동안"dong-an / a word that kind of means while and for and during which is of course, fine, but not standard Korean, and not really what you say in this context.
Often the question "how long have you been in Korea?" Is rendered: 한국에 온 지 얼마 됐어요?han-guk-ae on-ji eol-ma dwaess-eo-yo This literally means "the coming to Korea time has been how much?" or perhaps the better way of putting this would "how much time is it since you came to Korea?".
So your answer needs to use the construction: ㅡㄴ/-은 지-n/-eun ji. This is a little complicated, grammtically, but it impresses people. So if you know how to say month/year/day I would recommend learning the phrase and inserting your own time into it.
Answers to: 한국에 온 지 얼마 됐어요?han-guk-ae on-ji eol-ma dwaess-eo-yo / how long have you been in Korea?
- 한국에 온 지 1년 됐어요han-guk-ae on-ji il-yeon dwess-eo-yo / I've been in Korea for 1 year
- 한국에 온 지 3개월 됐어요han-guk-ae on-ji sam-gae-weol dwess-eo-yo / I've been in Korea for 3 months
- 한국에 온 지 6주일 됐어요han-guk-ae on-ji yuk-ju-il dwess-eo-yo / I've been in Korea for for 6 weeks
- 한국에 온 지 10일 됐어요 han-guk-ae on-ji ship-ildwess-eo-yo / I've been in Korea for 10 days
- 한국에 온 지 1년 3개월 6주일 10일 됐어요 han-guk-ae on-ji il-yeon, sam-gae-weol yuk-ju-il ship-il dwess-eo-yo / I've been in Korea for q year, 3 months, 6 weeks and 10 days
Notice that we use the Chinese number system to count months, days, years and weeks. If you want to include months and days or years and months, just start with the longest one first: years, months, weeks, days.
finally if you want to give the short answer, which is much more conversational, you can drop the 한국에 온 지han-guk-ae on-ji / I've been in Korea....
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