Lessons for everyone, everywhere
Honorifics
If you did not know, you better learn now. Koreans love being respected as well as respecting others. One major way for them to do so is by the way they speak to others. Throughout this course, you will realize the multitude of ways you can say the same phrase in Korean- all depending on who you speak to and in which environment you find yourself in.
The first two thing you will need to remember are the Casual Form (반말) and the Polite Form (존댓말) of speaking and writing in Korean. However, let's all start with some common phrases.
Common phrases
안녕하세요 ! This is the way you say " Hello" / "Hi" in Korean regardless of who you are speaking to. Let's break this down a little bit. 안녕 by itself means "peace" and 하세요 is the conjugated form of the verb 하다 which means "To do". So every time you are saying Hello in Korean, you actually "do peace".
안녕 ! Means "Hi" as well but it is the casual form of the greeting, mostly used between family and friends.
Everyone is wondering how to say Goodbye in Korean. Well, this is not as easy but we will break it down for you. There is no actual word for Goodbye in Korean and the way you say it all depends on how you and the interlocutor are parting ways.
Let's try to show you this through an image.
The girls on the left are in two different situations. One is leaving, the other remains.
How they say goodbye to eachother depends on who leaves and who stays behind.
To the person who leaves, the one who remains would say 안녕히 가세요
To the person who remains, the one who leaves would say 안녕히 계세요.
Why? And what is the difference?
We just learned that 안녕 means "peace". 안녕히 is the adverb formed from the word "peace" and subsequently means "peacefully".
가세요 is the conjugated form of the verb 가다 which means " To go", therefore 안녕히 가세요 would
translate to "Leave peacefully".
계세요 is the conjugated form of the verb 계시다 which means "To remain", therefore 안녕히 계세요 would
translate to "Remain peacefully".
What happens if both girls would part ways and no one remains behind? Both of them would say to each other 안녕히 가세요.
A casual way to say Goodbye in Korean would be 잘 가(요). Why did we put the 요 in brackets? 요 by itself means absolutely nothing- Koreans add it to the end of their verbs mostly to make themselves polite. And I can not emphasize enough how much Koreans love to be mannered and polite. Now let's break down the actual sentence of 잘 가. 잘 by itself means "Well" and 가 is the conjugated form of the verb 가다 which means "To go". And yes, you did learn this above and will now get confused of why the verb is now conjugated as "가" and before it was conjugated as "가세요". "가" is the most casual way to conjugate the verb, while "가세요" is a very formal way to do it.
Going back, 잘 가(요) means "Go well".
Now that you have learned how to greet and hopefully a few words as well, let's try to learn a few more thing this lesson. Click on each box if interested in learning more about each expression.
만나서
반갑습니다
"Nice to meet you!"
감사합니다/
고맙습니다
"Thank you"
사랑합니다/
사랑해요
"I love you"
잘지내셨어요?
"How have you been?"