Korean pronouns

Korean pronouns pose some difficulty to speakers of English due to their complexity. The Korean language makes extensive use of speech levels and honorifics in its grammar, and Korean pronouns also change depending on the social distinction between the speaker and the person or persons spoken to.

In general, Koreans avoid using second person singular pronouns, especially when using honorific forms. This is done by either by:
* Leaving out the subject of the sentence if it can be implied by the context. In English, sentences need explicit subjects, but this is not so in conversational Korean.
* Use the person's name. However this is only done when talking to someone younger than yourself. With people older than you, it is custom to use either a title or kinship term ("see next point").
* Use one of the following: 언니 ("eonni", "older sister" if speaker is female), 누나 ("nuna", "older sister" if speaker is male),오빠 ("obba", "older brother" if speaker is female), 兄 ("hyeong", "older brother" if speaker is male), 아줌마 ("ajumma", "middle aged woman"), 아주머니 ("ajumeoni", also "middle aged woman" but more polite), 아저씨 ("ajeossi", "middle aged man"), 할머니 ("halmeoni", "grandmother") of 할아버지 ("harabeoji", "grandfather"). In Korea it is common to use kinship terms for people who are not family at all.
* The term 아가씨 ("agassi", "young lady") is preferable when addressing a young girl of unknown age. It is mostly seen used in public places like restaurants. But it will also sometimes be used by men in pick-up lines. It should be noted that by definition the actual difference between 아가씨 and 아줌마 reside in marriage status and not age.
* Use the appropriate title. For example, if you are talking to a teacher, you can use 선생님("seonsaengnim", "teacher") (note: although 선생님is also often used as a general honorific term for other professions like managers etc.)
* Use the plural 여러분 ("yeoreobun") where applicable.

Pronouns

For each pronoun there is an informal and a humble/honorific form for first and second person. In the above table the first pronoun given is the humble one, which one would use when speaking to someone older or of high social status. 당신(the humble form of 너) literally means "friend", but is only used as a form of address and is more polite than 친구 ("chingu"), the usual word for "friend(s)." Do note that 당신 is also sometimes used as the Korean equivalent of "dear" as a form of address. Also, whereas uses of other humble forms are straightforward, 당신 must be used only in specific social contexts, such as between two married couples. In that way it can be used in an ironic sense when used between strangers.

There are two third person pronouns, male and female; however, the female form sounds awkward, and is mostly used when translating texts from other languages. Like Japanese, Korean originally had only one third person pronoun for both genders, 그, which literally means "it". However it has increasingly been interpretted as a "male" pronoun used for both genders. Although in recent years the pronoun 그녀 is slowly gaining ground as a female counterpart due to the influence of translations from European languages, it is almost restricted to specific styles of written language, because Korean generally uses subjectless or modifier+noun constructions.

ee also

Korean language

References

*Dong Jae Lee. "Some Problems in Learning Korean Second-Person Pronouns", in "The Korean Language: Its Structure and Social Projection", Ho-min Sohn, editor. Hawaii: University of Hawaii, c1975.