What is the meaning of 해보다 in this sentence: 생각을 좀 해봤어요?

When I look up the meaning of 해보다, It says “to try.” But the above sentence means “I’ve done a little thinking.” or “I’ve thought about it.” So, why say 해보다 instead of 하다?

Risposte

almeida_carol3

29 gen 2019

Portoghese (Brasile)

아/어보다 means to experience something, do something and see the result
If you say "생각해봐" it literally means: "try thinking about it to see what happens"
So when the person says 생각해봤어 it means she thought about something to see the result
People in daily life don't go through all this reasoning because it's automatic
It can also be used as a form of asking someone to do something but a more lightly request
Hope it wasn't very confusing :)

Utente eliminato

29 gen 2019

Each language has its own way of expressing things, so some things don't make sense when we translate literally from one language to another.

You could translate 해보다 as trying, but in this context, "trying" is actually making an effort to do something. If you've "done a little thinking", you actually made an effort in your mind to reason about something.

"To do" and "to try" cover much different meanings in the English language, and we don't have perfect equivalents in Korean. 해보다 could better be translated as "to try" or "to do" or another verb depending on the context and how it was used.

For example:

난 모든것을 조금씩 해봤어요.
I've done a little bit of everything.

그들에게 할인 가격을 제시해 봤어요?
Did you try offering them a discount?

우리 그것에 대해 잠깐 얘기 해봤어요.
We had a talk about it for a while.

When you say "해보다", it implies taking a chance or making an effort on doing something. It could be "doing something", "trying something", "having something", etc. there's no perfect translation to English! It's very context-depending! 😁

mmeelll

29 gen 2019

Inglese (Stati Uniti)

@almeida_carol3 No, it wasn’t confusing. Thank you.

@hazzz_ OK, I see what you mean. Thank you.

So, one thing I still don’t understand is when I should choose to use 해보다 over 하다 and vice versa. If anyone could give me some insight into that, I would appreciate it as well. Thank you.