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존댓말 or Polite speech
2 years agoStyles of speech--a broad classification
1. 존댓말 or Polite speech
반말(non-polite style): the style of speech in which you speak to your friends (of your
age) or to people younger than you are.
존 댓 말 (polite style): the style in which you speak to your superiors or seniors.
Level of politeness can be demarcated into two criteria:
(1) whom you talk to -- Politeness is achieved by - 아 요 /- 어 요 or - ㅂ 니 다
(2) whom you talk about -- Politeness is achieved by infix - 시 -.
When you talk to someone, that person could be older or younger than you (are is optional here, depends on the style you like). When you talk about someone to another person the subject of the conversation may be younger or older than you (are is optional here too). Chon-dae mal concerns the proper handling of both situations. In addition to age, rank in various social relations also dictates proper use of these speech styles.
Throughout these categories applies a supervening category of formality. This category
concerns the occasion where the conversation occurs. For example, the formal style will
be adopted more in work place, public speech, army, etc. ; whereas the informal would
better be used among close friends, family members, and people in private relationship.
However, in many cases, the consistency of formal/informal speech style is not really
strict. In other words, you may feel free to switch back and forth between formal and
informal style within a conversation, as long as you keep the consistency of politeness.
We can summarize the above:
TO / ABOUT / formal ending / informal ending
TO seniors(polite)
ABOUT juniors or self -ㅂ/습니다 -아/어요
ABOUT seniors -(으)십니다 -(으)세요
TO juniors(plain)
ABOUT juniors or self -다 -아/어
ABOUT seniors -(으)시다 -(으)셔
This is a simple outline of endings. As we will learn later, there are other grammatical
details that may be needed according to tense, verb/adjective differentiation, etc. There
are also other supplementary devices, such as self-effacing pronoun for the first person
(저 instead of plain 나 for 'I'), lexically honorific words (말씀 instead of 말 for 'speech,
words'), etc. which will also be discussed later.
Now let us see how we can make variation for same sentences. The following is in
informal style.
(Talking to my friend) The teacher is coming to our house.
선 생 님 이 우 리 집 에 오 셔 .
(Talking to my mother) The teacher is coming to our house.
선 생 님 이 우 리 집 에 오 세 요 .
(Talking to my younger sister) My friend is coming to our house.
친 구 가 우 리 집 에 와 .
(Talking to my mother) My friend is coming to our house.
친구가 우리 집에 와요.
Extensive variety in speech style is often the most overwhelming part when a foreigner
begins to learn Korean. It is known to be more complicated than in Japanese.
However, as much as it is hard to foreigners, it is not an easy matter to native speaker.
People in younger generations in Korea also experience difficulty with proper use of
speech style. (In fact, this is somehow related to the shifts that happened in the Korean
social structure. Speech style is a product of layers of social / kinship relationship.
Compared to traditional families where more than three generations lived in one house
or neighborhood, modern 'nuclear' families offer very few opportunities for the children
to practice different speech styles. )
