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I'm still new to learning Korean so my apologies if I'm misunderstanding something here but, I was curious about how the grammar worked for the phrase "빠져들고만 싶은".

If I understand it correctly, you have 빠져들다, which means "fall into" conjugated into the form to express desire (-고 싶어요) and then conjugated further to allow it to modify a noun (- (은)/ㄴ + N) and so I understand the meaning to be something like "the (something) (I) want to fall into".

However, the 만 is throwing me off with its position here.

Does "만" means "only" here? Is it possible to use 만 (only) this way with the form to express desire? The only other conjugation that I can think of is using 만 with the present progressive form (~고 있다), but I'm not sure if you can mix forms that way or not.

If I google "고만 싶어요" there are search results returned that feature this form of conjugation, such as:

지금은 그저 일만 고만 싶어요
정말 죽 고만 싶어요
흙덩이 갇 고만 싶어요

so I assume it's not an uncommon occurrence in Korean.

I appreciate any insight you can offer me.
Many thanks.

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    Usually it helps to show the full sentence (or even full paragraph), instead of just a fragment. Also, the first/third sentence you found on Google doesn't look right.
    – jick
    Aug 28, 2018 at 2:30
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    I can't know what 지금은 그저 "일만 고만 싶어요" means. Maybe 고만 is a wrong word for 그만(stop), which is not a kind of -고만 싶어요. Then it reads: I just really want to stop working by now. And 정말 죽고만 싶어요: I really want to die(irony) 흙덩이 같고만/갖고만 싶어요: I really want to be treated like just a soil dump./I really want to have a soil dump.(irony)
    – KYHSGeekCode-N
    Aug 28, 2018 at 9:11

3 Answers 3

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"xx하고만 싶다" is basically the same as "xx하고 싶다", but sounds stronger. I think it's more commonly used in lyrics or poems: it's not very common in everyday speech.

If it helps, consider it as "I want to do this and only this: I don't want anything else!"

So "빠져들고만 싶은" would be basically the same as "빠져들고 싶은" (something that I want to throw myself into), but sound more intense.

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  • Thank you very much for your answer and my apologies for not including the full sentence in my question like you mentioned in your comment to me but yes as you mentioned, this phrase is actually from a song. Are there any rules I should be aware of when wanting to write a phrase this way (such as how 만 goes after 고)? Also, as this isn't used for common everyday speech, are there other more common ways to convey this sort of feeling? Or would 하고 싶다 get the point across?
    – www
    Aug 28, 2018 at 13:40
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    If you want to sound more conversational, simply adding 아주/정말/진짜/etc. would do the job. E.g., 정말 집에 가고 싶어요. (I really want to go home.)
    – jick
    Aug 28, 2018 at 17:34
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만 in 하고만 is postposition. Some postpositions can be used after some conjugation. As you think, 만 in this case means "only". So "하고만 싶어요" can be translated as "I only want to do".

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  • Thank you very much for your answer as it confirms some things that I was curious about. Do you know of any other post positions that are used after conjugations like this? Most of what I've researched online for this particular usage doesn't really mention using 만 like this, as most resources say you can only use 만 after a verb by conjugating with 기.
    – www
    Aug 28, 2018 at 13:50
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    The other example is '도' in '하고도 싶어요', which means "I also want to do". These postpositions are called 보조사 (can be translated into auxiliary postpositions). 보조사 can be used after nouns, adverbs, and some suffixes used in conjugation. Since -기 is a suffix, '만' and '도' can be used after '하기'.
    – paxbun
    Aug 28, 2018 at 14:09
  • Thank you very much for your reply. I'll be sure to take a look into 보조사 and see what else I can learn.
    – www
    Aug 28, 2018 at 16:38
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I'm just guessing, but a quick word search on endic.naver.com gives me the following:

빠져들다 Be addicted to

그만 so little [small] as; that much and no more.

So it could mean something like, "I want to be addicted to it that much only"?

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