The retrospective 더: reporting what you saw

The plain past states a fact, and how you know it doesn't come into it. 더 brings you into the sentence as the person who was there. You're replaying something you saw, heard, tasted or felt at an earlier time, usually for someone who wasn't there.

Look at the tense in examples 2 and 4. 춥더라고요 has no 었, even though the trip is over. 더 carries the speaker back to that moment, and from where you stood then, it was cold now. That's why English needs a tag like "I found", and why no single translation works.

You've met a close relative in ~네요. 네요 is what you say at the table with the food in your mouth. 더라고요 is what you say the next day, telling someone about it.

더라고요 goes straight on the stem, so irregular verbs stay as they are. Learn this form first, because it's polite and it fits most conversations. You'll also see it written 더라구요, which is how it often sounds but isn't standard spelling.

Why bother, when the plain past is shorter? To my ear 더라고요 is the friendlier sentence. You're not laying down a fact, you're sharing what you found, and the listener can take it or check it for themselves.

The same statement comes in three levels. 더라 is 반말, for friends. 더군요 is 군요 with 더 in front, polite and more measured, so you'll meet it in narration and from older speakers. 더라고요 will cover nearly everything you say yourself.

Most textbooks give a flat rule here: 더 can't have "I" as its subject. That's roughly true, but it's a result of the one idea and not a separate law. To report what you saw, you must have been looking at it from outside, and you don't look at your own deliberate actions from outside.

So 제가 어제 영화를 보더라고요 sounds wrong, or sounds as if you've been watching yourself on a screen. You know what you did, so you say 봤어요. Other people are what 더 is for, and that includes the listener: 너 노래 잘하더라 is "you sing really well", because you heard them.

Feelings run the other way. You can observe your own feelings as they arrive, but nobody can see inside someone else. So 저는 슬프더라고요 is fine and 민수 씨가 슬프더라고요 isn't. For him, report what you could see, with 슬퍼하더라고요 from 아/어하다 or 슬퍼 보이더라고요.

And "I" is possible whenever you really were looking from outside. That means dreams, photos, results on a screen, or finding out how you compare with everyone else. All of these are the one idea again: you discovered something about yourself.

The witness also has to be you. News you only heard about goes through 대요. And 더 has no use for what everyone knows: 해는 동쪽에서 뜨더라고요 sounds as if you've only just looked.

더 can sit on the bare stem or on 았/었. The difference is what you walked in on. On the bare stem, you saw it going on. On 았/었, it was already over when you arrived, and you saw what it left behind.

Adjectives usually stay on the bare stem, for the reason you saw earlier: 맛있더라고요 already means it was good when you tried it. 겠 can go in as well, and it reports what you judged at the time.

Put a question word in front of 더라 and you're asking yourself. You're searching your memory of what you saw, and nobody has to answer. You'll hear this all the time, often muttered, and here it can be about your own actions, because you've lost track of them.

던가 can do the same job, and it reads to me as a little more written, though you'll hear 그랬던가? in speech too. With 요 it turns outward, and here the person rule flips, because in a question the witness is the listener. So 던가요 asks what they saw.

던데 is ~는데 with a witness inside. The clause is still background for what comes next, but it's background you saw for yourself. It goes on the stem, or on 았/었 for something already over.

Stop there, add 요, and 던데요 works like ~는데요 does: you leave the rest to the listener. It's a polite way to disagree. You're not telling them they're wrong, only saying what you saw.

더니 joins two things you watched. The first clause is what you saw, and the second is what followed: a change, a next step or a result. English has no one word for it, so the translation moves around, but the speaker is doing the same thing each time.

The limit on the second clause comes from the one idea as well. You're reporting a sequence you watched, and nobody can watch a plan or a command. If what comes next hasn't happened yet, you want 던데.

Add 았/었 and the first clause becomes something you did. You finished your own action, and then you saw what came of it. So this is the partner of 더니, and the person is reversed: the first clause is usually "I".

That reversal makes sense if you ask where the watching happens. With 더니, you watch A. With 았/었더니, you did A, so the thing you watch is B: what you found, how it turned out or how someone reacted.

Example 1 is close to the "did it and found" use of (으)니까, and there 가니까 works too. Here's the difference from 더니 in one pair. The second sentence has no 저 in it, because the ending already tells you who drank the coffee.