Korean Honorifics
- Systems, not one
- 3
- Speech levels
- 6
- In daily use
- 4
- Honorific word pairs
- 47
Three kinds of respect
상대 높임법 — the listener
Who you are talking to, marked on the ending. 갑니다 · 가요 · 가 are one verb at three levels, and nothing else in the sentence changes.
주체 높임법 — the subject
Who you are talking about, marked with -(으)시- inside the verb, 께서 on the subject, and a handful of separate words: 계시다, 주무시다, 진지.
객체 높임법 — the object
Who the action lands on. 주다 becomes 드리다, 보다 becomes 뵙다, 묻다 becomes 여쭙다, and 에게 becomes 께 — because of the recipient, not the speaker.
They really are independent
할머니께서 주무십니다.
Grandmother is sleeping.
Honorific about grandmother (께서, 주무시-) and formal to the listener (-습니다). Both dials up.
할머니 주무셔?
Is grandma asleep?
Still honorific about grandmother (주무시-), but 반말 to the listener — your sister. The subject dial did not move; the listener dial did.
제 동생이 잡니다.
My younger sibling is sleeping.
Formal to the listener, plain about the subject. Your own sibling is never raised — not even to a stranger.
Two dials, set independently. Almost every honorific mistake a learner makes is turning one of them when they meant the other.
존댓말 and 반말
The formal split is one syllable. 요 on the end is 존댓말; no 요 is 반말. Everything else follows from who is entitled to hear which.
Start everyone in 존댓말. Age, rank and closeness all shift the line, and none of them shifts it automatically: a colleague two years older is 존댓말 for months, and a friend of ten years is 반말 even if they are ten years older. What changes it is an explicit offer — 말 놓으세요 from the junior, or 말 놔도 돼? between equals — and until that offer is made, the 요 stays on.
The asymmetry is real and it is not rudeness: an older speaker using 반말 to you while you use 존댓말 back is the normal, comfortable state of a Korean friendship with an age gap in it. Reading it as condescension is a foreigner's error, and refusing the 반말 they offer you is the more awkward move.
Common mistakes
✗저는 지금 가세요.
✓저는 지금 가요.
-(으)시- raises the subject, and the subject here is you. Politeness to the listener lives on the ending.
✗커피 나오셨습니다.
✓커피 나왔습니다.
You hear this in every café in Seoul and it is still wrong: the coffee is not a person. 국립국어원 calls it 사물 존칭 and advises against it.
✗선생님, 시간 계세요?
✓선생님, 시간 있으세요?
계시다 is 있다 meaning "be present". For 있다 meaning "have", the honorific is 있으시다 — you are honouring the time, on the teacher's behalf.
✗우리 아버지께서 오셨어요. — to your boss, about your father
✓저희 아버지가 오셨어요.
우리 becomes 저희 when you speak about your own side to someone outside it. The 시 stays — your father is still your father.
The two pages that do the work
Common questions
What is the difference between 존댓말 and 반말?
존댓말 is speech that raises the person you are talking to, 반말 is speech that does not. In practice the line is the syllable 요: 가요 is 존댓말, 가 is 반말. The mistake is thinking of 반말 as rude — it is the language of every close friendship in Korea. It is only rude when it has not been agreed, which is why Koreans ask before switching.
Do I ever use 시 about myself?
Never. -(으)시- raises the subject of the sentence, and raising yourself is the one thing the system cannot do. 저는 가세요 is not extra-polite, it is ungrammatical in a way that sounds like a mistranslation. To be polite about your own action you change the ending, not the stem: 저는 갑니다.
Which is more polite, 해요체 or 합니다체?
Neither. They differ on formality, not politeness. 합니다체 is formal — announcements, presentations, uniformed staff — and 해요체 is the everyday polite level, and using 해요체 to your boss in a meeting is fine while using 합니다체 to a friend is a joke. Learn 해요체 first; you will hear 합니다체 far more often than you will need to say it.
How many honorific words are there?
Far fewer than the system suggests. The 국립국어원 dictionary carries 47 honorific links in total, and most of them are literary; about fifteen pairs — 계시다, 주무시다, 드시다, 진지, 연세, 성함, 댁, 말씀 and a handful more — cover everything a learner will meet. Everything else is done by the -(으)시- infix, which attaches to any verb at all.
Is it true that you drop 시 when talking to someone even more senior?
That is 압존법, and it is now the narrower rule. In a family a grandchild traditionally says 할아버지, 아버지가 왔어요 rather than 오셨어요. In a workplace 국립국어원's own guidance is the opposite: you say 사장님, 김 과장님이 하셨습니다 with the 시 kept. Applying 압존법 at work is the older, stricter usage and is no longer the standard advice.
Word pairs, definitions and example sentences from the 국립국어원 한국어기초사전, used under CC BY-SA 2.0 KR.