Grammar
N개월 연속
Meaning
IntermediateN gaewol yeonsog
Says a figure has moved the same way for N months running, with no month breaking the pattern: 10개월 연속 감소 is ten straight monthly falls, 4개월 연속 확대 four straight months of growth. 연속 is the Sino-Korean word for 'in succession', so what the phrase asserts is that the run is unbroken — not how much the figure moved over that stretch. The word right after it names the direction being repeated, and the same frame takes any period: 이틀 연속, 3주 연속, 5분기 연속, 7년 연속.
Form
Number + 개월 + 연속, written as separate words (10개월 연속). 개월 is the Sino-Korean counter for months, so the number in front is read Sino-Korean (10개월 = 십 개월); the native counter 달 takes native numerals (열 달) and does not appear in this frame. 연속 normally sits directly in front of the noun or verb naming the direction — 연속 감소, 연속 상승, 연속 하락 — and the 연속으로 form is used when a full verb follows (10개월 연속으로 줄었습니다). Any other unit of time drops into the same slot in place of 개월: N일, N주, N년, N분기.
Examples
전세대출은 10개월 연속 감소 기조를 이어갔습니다.
Jeonse loans extended their decline to a tenth consecutive month.
Common mistakes & nuance
Two things to watch while reading. First, a streak counts periods, not amounts: 10개월 연속 감소 tells you it fell in every one of those ten months and nothing at all about how far it fell, so it can sit above a headline number that barely moved. Second, the count runs backwards from the newest figure and ends the moment one month breaks the pattern — which is why the report that follows a broken streak usually switches to N개월 만에 ('for the first time in N months'). 연속 is not only a statistics word; it works the same way in everyday sentences like 사흘 연속 야근.
Similar grammar
- N째
Both count periods, but one counts a run and the other counts a position. 3개월 연속 says three months in a row went the same way, and the unbroken run is the claim. 3개월째 says you are now in the third month of something still under way, counted forward from when it started. A streak can be broken and reported as over; 째 only ever says where the count stands today.
- -에 이어
Two ways of saying the same run, at different lengths. 전월에 이어 감소 names only the one earlier period the new figure follows, so it says the run is at least two long without saying how long. N개월 연속 감소 gives the whole length outright. Statistics writing often uses both in one sentence — 전월에 이어 10개월 연속 — with 에 이어 supplying the link and 연속 the total.
- N 만이다
Opposite sides of the same statistic. N개월 연속 says the pattern held for N months; N개월 만이다 (and the mid-sentence 만에) says it did not — that this is the first time in N months something has happened. News writing puts one at the end of a streak and the other at its start, so reading 10개월 만에 증가 as a ten-month rise inverts the story completely.