What does -꺼에요 mean?

What does -꺼에요 mean?

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저희 언니꺼에요 means “it is my older sister’s” or “it belongs to my older sister”

꺼에요 means "(it is) so-and-so’s. It’s a colloquial form derived as follows.

것 (thing) + 이어요 (it is) → 것이에요 → 거예요 → 꺼에요
Where 이어요/이에요/에요/에요 are an interchangeable set and 꺼 is a street pronunciation of the more proper 거.

Strictly speaking, the phrase should be like 언니의 거예요 since 의 is the possessive particle that comes after a noun/pronoun to indicate possession, but it is dropped most of the time. In Korean a lot of things tend to get contracted or dropped outright as long as doding so doesn’t change the meaning.

So 언니꺼에요 means “(It’s) elder sister’s” or “It’s my elder sister’s”, where the subject might have been dropped, or it could be a part of a sentence.

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