Korean language

The Korean language (??? / ???) is the most widely used language in Korea, and is the official language of both North and South Korea. The language is also spoken widely in neighbouring Yanbian, China. Worldwide, there are around 78 million Korean speakers, including large groups in the former Soviet Union, Australia, the United States, Canada, Brazil, Japan, and more recently the Philippines. The language is strongly associated with the Korean people.

Speech levels and honorifics

The relationship between a speaker or writer and his or her subject and audience is paramount in Korean, and the grammar reflects this. The relationship between speaker/writer and subject is reflected in honorifics, while that between speaker/writer and audience is reflected in speech level.

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Honorifics

When talking about someone superior in status, a speaker or writer has to use special nouns or verb endings to indicate the subject's superiority. Generally, someone is superior in status if he/she is an older relative, a stranger of roughly equal or greater age, or an employer, teacher, customer, or the like. Someone is equal or inferior in status if he/she is a younger stranger, student, employee or the like. On rare occasions (like when someone wants to pick a fight), a speaker might speak to a superior or stranger in a way normally only used for, say, animals, but no one would do this without seriously considering the consequences to their physical safety first!

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One way of using honorifics is to use special nouns in place of regular nouns with "honorific" ones. A common example is using ?? (jinji) instead of ? (bap) for "food". More often, special nouns are used when speaking about relatives. Thus, the speaker/writer may address his own grandmother as ??? (halmeoni) but refer to someone else's grandmother as ??? (halmeonim). The honorific suffix -? (-nim) is affixed to many kinship terms to make them honorific; thus, ?? (hyeongnim) is the formal term for an older sibling of the same sex (derived from ? (hyeong,) the informal term for man's older brother; ?? (eonni) is the informal term for a woman's older sister).

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All verbs can be converted into an honorific form by adding the infix -?- (-si-, pronounced shi) after the stem and before the verb ending. Thus, ?? (gada, "go") becomes ??? (gasida). A few verbs have special honorific equivalents. Therefore ??? (gyesida) is the honorific form of ?? (itda, "exist"); ??? (deusida) and ???? (japsusida) is the honorific form of ?? (meokda, "eat"); and ???? (jumusida) is the honorific form of ?? (jada, "sleep").

Related Topics:
Stem - Ending

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A few verbs have special humble forms, used when the speaker is referring to him/herself in polite situations. These include ??? (deurida) and ??? (ollida) for ?? (juda, "give"). Deurida is substituted for juda when the latter is used as an auxiliary verb, while ollida — which literally means "raise up" — is used for juda in the sense of "offer".

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Pronouns in Korean have their own set of polite equivalents: thus, ? (jeo) is the humble form of ? (na, "I"); ?? (jeoheui) is the humble form of ?? (uri, "we"); and ?? (dangsin, "friend," but only used as a form of address and more polite than "chingu", the usual word for "friend"; also, whereas uses of other humble forms are straightforward, "dangsin" must be used only in specific social contexts, such as between two married couple — "dangsin" can often be used in ironic sense when used between strangers) is the honorific form of ? (neo, "you" (singular). Note: in general, Koreans avoid using second person singular pronoun, especially when using honorific forms, and either i) use the person's name, kinship term, or title in place of "you" in English, ii) use plural ??? yeoreobun where applicable, or iii) avoid using a pronoun, relying on context to supply meaning instead).

Related Topics:
Pronouns in Korean - Kinship term

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Speech levels

There are no fewer than 7 verb paradigms or speech levels in Korean, and each level has its own unique set of verb endings which are used to indicate the level of formality of a situation. Unlike "honorifics" — which are used to show respect towards a subject — speech levels are used to show respect towards a speaker's or writer's audience. The names of the 7 levels are derived from the non-honorific imperative form of the verb ?? (hada, "do") in each level, plus the suffix ? ('che'), which means "style."

Related Topics:
Paradigm - Imperative

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The highest 5 levels use final verb endings, while the lowest 2 levels (??? haeyoche and ?? haeche) use non-final endings and are called ?? (banmal, "half-words") in Korean. (The haeyoche in turn is formed by simply adding the non-final ending -? (-yo) to the haeche form of the verb.)

Related Topics:
Final - Ending - Non-final

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Taken together, honorifics and speech levels form a cartesian product of 14 basic verb stems. Here is a table giving the 7 levels, the present indicative form of the verb ?? (hada, "do" in English) in each level in both its honorific and non-honorific forms, and the situations in which each level is used.

Related Topics:
Cartesian product - Present - Indicative

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