Korean speech levels: 반말 and 존댓말

This is the part of Korean that makes learners anxious, and the anxiety is misplaced. Korean does not have a polite word and a rude word for everything. It has one sentence with a choice of endings, and the ending says how close you are to the person listening.

Three of them matter. Below you can hear the same sentence in all three. The rest of this guide covers when each is right, plus the separate system that trips people up: honorifics, which are about the person you are talking about rather than the person you are talking to.

Older grammars list seven levels, and you will meet the extra ones in historical dramas, poetry and the occasional stern sign. Modern conversation has collapsed them to three. Learning all seven makes the topic harder than it is.

The choice is about distance rather than manners, and Korean makes you state it in every sentence. English can leave the relationship unspecified; Korean cannot, which is why “how old are you?” arrives so early in a conversation. That is grammar, not nosiness.

Pick a sentence, then move along the dial. The word doing the work never changes: the stem stays put and only the tail moves.

The polite ending in 요 is the workhorse of spoken Korean, and the register this course and almost every textbook teaches first. It is correct with strangers, colleagues, shopkeepers, teachers, and anyone whose relationship to you is not yet settled.

It is never rude. You can spend years speaking only 해요체 and never cause offence, which is not true of the other two. If you remember nothing else from this page, add 요 and you will be fine.

Building it is conjugation, not memorisation, and one regular pattern covers most verbs. The verb conjugation guide walks through it.

Learners over-apply -습니다 because it sounds like the most respectful option and therefore the safest. It is not more polite than 해요체. It is more formal, a different thing, and formality used with a friend reads as coldness.

Where it belongs: announcements, presentations, broadcasts, the military, and customer service. This is the register shop staff use on you and the one you hear on the subway. In conversation it puts distance between you and the listener on purpose.

Questions in this register end -습니까 rather than -습니다, which is one of the few places Korean marks a question with anything other than intonation.

반말 is not rude in itself. It is intimate, which is why it lands badly with the wrong person: you have announced a closeness they have not agreed to. Words that are warm with a friend are presumptuous with someone you met an hour ago.

The switch is a social moment with a name, 말 놓다, and it usually comes from the older person or is negotiated openly. As a learner you will be on the receiving end of the offer, which makes this simple: use 해요체 until told otherwise.

Meeting a Korean for the first time usually means being asked your age within a few minutes, which lands strangely on English speakers who file that with salary and weight. It is not curiosity. Every sentence either of you says next needs a register, and relative age decides it.

Someone even a year older is 형, 누나, 오빠 or 언니 rather than a name, and that relationship sets who may offer 반말 to whom. Without the answer, your conversation partner is guessing at grammar. Asking is efficient, not rude.

It also explains why Koreans ask for a birth year rather than a number of years. Traditional reckoning counted everyone as one at birth, so the same person could give two different ages depending on which system you meant, until a 2023 law made the international count official for legal purposes. The Korean numbers guide covers how to say and understand the answer.

This is the most useful distinction on the page, and most explanations blur it. Seen as two separate dials, sentences that looked baffling become readable: the ending tells you who is being spoken to, the 시 tells you who is being spoken about with respect.

A handful of common verbs do not take the infix at all. They swap for a different word entirely, and they are everyday verbs, so you will meet them early.

Nouns do it too. A few everyday words have a separate honorific version, used when the noun belongs to someone you are treating with respect. Worth knowing: you will hear them addressed to you in shops and offices.

You will meet 성함 first. Asked your name on a form or at a counter, the question will probably use it rather than 이름, and recognising it saves a confused pause.

님 is the honorific suffix that turns a role into a form of address, and it attaches to titles, not first names. A manager is their job title plus 님, never their name.

씨 is the milder one, attached to a name for a peer or someone you do not know well. Polite but not deferential, so it is right for a colleague at your level and wrong for your boss. It goes on the full name or the given name, never the surname alone, which reads as brusque.

The same instinct applies to the word for I. 저 is the humble form and 나 is the plain one, and they pair with the registers above: 저 alongside 해요체 and 합쇼체, 나 alongside 반말. Saying 나 with a polite ending gives away a learner who has picked up phrases from different places.

Less than you fear. Visible learners get enormous latitude on this point, and the failure mode of over-politeness is sounding slightly formal, which nobody minds. Koreans routinely relax their expectations for foreigners speaking Korean at all.

The one mistake worth avoiding is 반말 with someone older or newly met. It does not read as friendly informality, it reads as having decided the relationship on their behalf.

One trap catches people who are otherwise doing everything right. Dramas and variety shows are full of 반말, because they are mostly about people who are close, so phrases absorbed that way arrive without the relationship that licensed them. A line that sounded charming between two leads is a different thing said to a stranger.

The advice is unexciting and correct: learn 해요체 properly, recognise 합쇼체 when it is used on you, understand 반말 so you can follow friends talking to each other, and wait to be invited before using it yourself.

Six situations. Pick the register or the word that fits.