Learn Korean (eng) (grammar & voc)

Honorifics (intro)

Nouns:

신발 = shoe
남방 = shirt
질문 = question
문제 = question/problem
나이 = age
화장실 = bathroom, restroom
부장님 = boss
분위기 = the atmosphere of something
차 = tea
바지 = pants
교실 = classroom
급식 = food at school
교감선생님 = vice principal
교장선생님 = principal
풀 = glue
수도 = capital city
병 = bottle
병 = disease, sickness
생선 = fish
야채 = vegetable
언덕 = hill
선물 = present
기타 = guitar
종이 = paper
우유 = milk
손목 = wrist
시계 = clock
손목시계 = wristwatch
영화 = movie

Verbs:

노력하다 = to try
앉다 = to sit
만지다 = to touch
자다 = to sleep
보다 = to see
기다리다 = to wait
청소하다 = to clean
약속하다 = to promise
듣다 = to hear
들어보다 = to listen
그만하다 = to stop
운동하다 = to exercise

Adjectives:

놀라다 = to be surprised
빠르다 = to be fast
느리다 = to be slow
착하다 = to be nice

Adverbs and Other Words:

곧 = soon
항상 = always
주 = week
아래 = bottom

You learned how to conjugate verbs and adjectives into the past, present and future forms. You also learned that those conjugations are hardly ever used in speech and are most often used when writing a book, test, article or diary. In this lesson, you will learn the basic word conjugations that are more commonly used in speech.
What are Honorifics in Korean?

To this point, you haven’t learned anything about Honorifics. In Korean, depending on who you are speaking to, you must use different conjugations of the same word.
The different conjugations imply respect and politeness to the person you are speaking to.
Depending on that person’s age and seniority, you must speak differently to that person.
The reason this is so hard for English speakers to understand is that we have nothing like
this in English.
We can make some sentences sound polite by adding ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ but you can only use those words in a limited amount of sentences.
For example, if somebody asked you “where did you go yesterday?” You could respond:
I went to school yesterday.

In English, regardless of whether you were speaking to your girlfriend’s grandfather or your best friend, that sentence would look and sound exactly the same.
In Korean, you must use a higher respect form when speaking to somebody older or higher in position.
Never, never underestimate the importance of honorific endings in Korean.
Keep in mind that all these conjugations with different honorific endings have exactly the same meaning. You will learn how to conjugate using honorifics in the following ways:

1) Informal low respect
When talking with friends, people you are close with, younger people and family.

2) Informal high respect
Used in most situations, even in formal situations despite being called “informal.” This is usually the way most people speak when they are trying to show respect.

3) Formal high respect
This is a very high respect form that is used when addressing people who deserve a lot of respect from you. It is hard to describe perfectly, but honestly, the difference between ‘Informal high respect’ and ‘Formal high respect’ is not very big. As long as you speak in either of these two ways, you will not offend anyone.
The names of each form of speech might be different in every source, but I have chosen
the words above to describe each form.
Before you start! Remember the rule you learned before:
When adding something to a word stem, if the last vowel in the stem is ㅏ or ㅗ, you must add 아 plus whatever you are adding.
If the last vowel is anything other than ㅏ or ㅗ, you must add 어 plus whatever you are adding.
If the syllable of the stem is 하, you add 하여 which can be shortened to 해.

Also, in the previous chapters, you learned that if a stem of a word ends in a vowel, “았/었다” gets merged to the actual stem itself when conjugating into the past tense.
In this chapter, two of the conjugations you will learn will require the addition of 아/어.
When adding 아/어 to the stem of a word, the same rule applies from previous lesson.
That is, if 아/어 gets added to a stem that ends in a vowel, 아/어 will be merged to the stem itself. For example:

가다 + 아/어 = 가 (가 + 아)
오다 + 아/어 = 와 (오 + 아)
배우다 + 아/어 = 배워 (배우 + 어)
끼다 + 아/어 = 껴 (끼 + 어)
나서다 + 아/어 = 나서 (나서 + 어)
켜다 + 아/어 = 켜 (켜 + 어)
하다 + 아/어 = 해 (하 + 여)

Conversely, if a stem ends in a consonant, 아/어 is attached to the stem, but not merged to it. For example:

먹다 + 아/어 = 먹어 (먹 + 어)
앉다 + 아/어 = 앉아 (앉 + 아)

There are many situations when you will have to add 아/어 (or other vowels) to stems. Conjugating is just one of these situations. Always keep this rule in mind.