Honorific Nouns
When talking about someone superior in status, a speaker or writer must indicate the subject's superiority by using special nouns or verb endings. Generally, someone is superior in 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 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.
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 (bap) for "food". Often, honorific nouns are used to refer to relatives. The honorific suffix -님 (-nim) is affixed to many kinship terms to make them honorific. Thus, someone may address his own grandmother as 할머니 (halmeoni) but refer to someone else's grandmother as 할머님 (halmeonim).
| Base noun | Honorific | English translation |
|---|---|---|
| 할머니 (halmeoni) | 할머님 (halmeonim) | grandmother |
| 아버지 (abeoji) | 아버님 (abeonim) | father |
| 형 (hyeong) | 형님 (hyeongnim) | a male's older brother |
| 누나 (noona) | 누님 (nunim) | a male's older sister |
| 오빠 (oppa) | 오라버니 (orabeoni) | a female's older brother |
| 언니 (eonni) | a female's older sister | |
| 아들 (adeul) | 아드님 (adeunim) | son |
| 딸 (ttal) | 따님 (ttanim) | daughter |
Read more about this topic: Korean Honorifics
Famous quotes containing the word nouns:
“All the facts of nature are nouns of the intellect, and make the grammar of the eternal language. Every word has a double, treble or centuple use and meaning.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)