Understanding 어떡하면 좋을지

Question

"어떡하면 좋을지 도와주세요."

I've seen this translated as "Please help me figure out what to do." and "Please advise me what to do."

As an early intermediate Korean learner, I would never have come up with that Korean if asked to translate the English. The Korean sentence construction just seems extremely foreign. I roughly understand the constituent components on their own, but I need some help getting into a "Korean mindset" in order to be able to come up with such a construction myself as a native speaker would.

My understanding is that:

• 어떡하다 roughly means "what do we do" or "what about"
• -으면 means "if" or "when"
• 좋- conveys a positive connotation like "good" or "like"
• -을지 conveys uncertainty
• 도와주다 means "to help, assist someone"; from 돕다 + 아 + 주다
• -세요 : polite imperative

Can anyone explain how the conflation of the parts makes up the intended meaning?

Answer 1

From a pedagogical perspective:

I would say the most "foreign" for an English speaker here is the combination of "what about" + "if" + "good". It might be better if you think of 어떡하다 as 어떻게 하다 "how to do". The resulting 'expansion' of the expression becomes:

어떻게 하면 좋다

how if+do good

"How to do [this] if it is good?"

What should I do / be done?

The grammatical structure -면 좋다 in Korean is frequently equated to "should" in English, although that is not always the most natural translation. But it can work as a conceptual base.

The addition of the -을지 to 좋다 is required to connect the actual "request" verb, 도와주세요. You may prefer to think of this construction as "whether it will be good", and equivalent to certain cases where English would use "whether", "if" or even other question words like "what". For example, the common -을지 모르겠다 construction:

선물 주었는데 좋을지 모르겠다

gift give+PAST+는데 good+whether not+know+DUBITATIVE

(I) gave the gift; whether it is good (I) don't kind of know.

(I) gave (them) the gift but (I) don't know whether (they) will like it (or not).