Aya Aya Wae

The eastern culture carries in its Confucianism roots a high regard for social status. Social status can be based on many things: age, job seniority, role in the family, being a teacher, etc. It usually doesn’t hinge on wealth, but your role in society. Generally, someone is superior status if he or she is an older relative, a stranger of roughly equal or greater age, an employer, a teacher, a customer, or the like. Someone is equal or inferior in status if he or she is a younger stranger, a student, an employee or the like.

The Korean language reflects the important observance of a speaker or writer’s relationships with both the subject of the sentence and the audience. Korean grammar uses an extensive system of honorifics to reflects the speaker’s relationship to the subject of the sentence and speech levels to reflect the speaker’s relationship to the audience. The use of wrong speech levels or diction is likely to be considered insulting, depending on the degree of difference between the used form and the expected form.

1. Common Honorifics

• 씨 (Ssi)씨 is the most commonly used honorific suffix used amongst people of approximately equal speech level. It is attached at the end of the full name, such as 김철수씨 (Kim Cheolsu-ssi) or simply after the first name, 철수씨 (Cheolsu-ssi) if you are more familiar with someone. Appending -씨 to the surname, for instance 김씨 (Kim-ssi), can be quite rude, as it indicates the speaker considerates him/herself to be of a higher social status that the person referred to. 씨 can be translated as Mr./Mrs./Miss. For example 민지씨, means Miss/Mrs. Minji (Minji is a typical name for a girl). This would be used towards strangers, but not friends.
• 군 / 양 (Gun / Yang)군 is used moderately on very formal occasions, such as weddings, to a male only. 양 (Yang) is the female equivalent of 군. Both are used in a similar fashion to 씨, succeeding either the whole name or the surname in solitude.
• 선생 (Seonsaeng)선생 has much more formality and is used to show respect to the addressee.
• 귀하 / 각하 (Gwiha / Gakha)귀하 / 각하 are used only in extremely formal occasions, usually only in letters or when addressing monarchs and presidents.
• 선배 (Seonbae)선배 is used to address senior colleagues or mentor figures, e.g. students referring to or addressing more senior students in schools, or a mentor or more experienced or senior colleague in a business environment. As with English titles such as Doctor, 선배 can be used either by itself or as a title. 선배 is gender neutral, meaning it can be used towards men and women. There are rare situations where선배 can be younger than his/her colleague and yet have more experience in the workplace.
• 후배 (Hubae)후배 is used to refer to juniors. However, the term is not normally addressed to them directly, and is mainly used in the third person.

2. Honorific Speech

When talking about someone superior in status, a speaker or writer must indicate the subject’s superiority by using special nouns or verb endings.
One way of using honorifics is to use special “honorific” nouns in place of regular ones. A common example is using 진지 (jinji) instead of 밥 (bab) for “food”.

• 님 (Nim)님 (Nim) is a suffix that usually attached to professions. The difference between 님 and 씨 is that 씨 is used after actual names, while 님 is used after an occupation. The word for teacher (성생님) is a word that often has the 님 attached. The honorific suffix 님 is affixed to one of the kinship terms to make it honorific, often to refer to family members other than one’s own. Thus, someone may address his own grandmother as 할머니 (halmeoni) but refer to someone else’s grandmother as 할머님 (halmeonim).

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• · 시 / 으시 (Si / Eusi) All verbs and adjectives can be converted into an honorific form by adding the infix -시- (-si-) or -으시- (-eusi-) after the stem (root) and before the ending. For example 가다 (gada, “to go”) becomes 가시다 (gasida).

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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 드리다 (deurida) and 올리다 (ollida) for 주다 (juda, “give”). 드리다 is substituted for주다 when the latter is used as an auxiliary verb, while올리다 (literally “raise up”) is used for 주다 in the sense of “offer”.

Pronouns in Korean have their own set of polite equivalents, e.g. 저 (jeo) is the humble fom of 나 (na, “I”) and 저희 (jeohui) is the humble form of 우리 (uri, “we”). However, Koreans usually avoid using the second person singular pronoun, especially when using honorific forms, and often avoid the third person pronouns as well. So, although honorific form of 너 (neo, singular “you”) is 당신 (dangsin, literally “friend” or “dear”), that term is used only as a form of address in a few special social contexts, such as between two married couples or in an ironic sense between strangers. Other words are usually subtituted where possible, e.g. the person’s name, a kinship term, a professional title, the plural 여러분 (yeorobun), or no word at all, relying on context to supply meaning instead.

3. Honorific Rules

What if you’re talking to your grandfather about your father? Would you honorifically about your father? But your grandfather is of higher status than your father. So what do you do? Here’s the solution. We’ll use a code to make this easy. “A” is the person with the highest status. “B” is second, and “C” has the least status:

• If A talks to B or C, A can use blunt (familiar) form.
• If C is talking to A about B, C doesn’t have to speak honorifically about B.
• If C is talking to B about A, C should use honorific languange.
• When C talks to A or B, honorific language should be used.
• C should never speak honorifically about him/herself.

[from various sources]

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1. Korean – Basic Grammar
2. Korean Family Relationships
3. Let’s Speak Korean 01
4. Korean Trivia
5. Korean Curses & Insults
6. Special Korean Insults

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 9:42 pm and is filed under Korea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.