Special Honorific Vocabulary
Some verbs do not take '-(eu)si-' at all; instead they are replaced entirely by special honorific words. Let's learn the most frequently used ones.
| Base | Special honorific | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| ๋จน๋ค/๋ง์๋ค | ๋์๋ค / ์ก์์๋ค | to eat/drink |
| ์๋ค (์ฌ๋) | ๊ณ์๋ค | to be/stay (a person) |
| ์๋ค | ์ฃผ๋ฌด์๋ค | to sleep |
| ์ฃฝ๋ค | ๋์๊ฐ์๋ค | to pass away |
| ๋งํ๋ค | ๋ง์ํ์๋ค | to speak |
| ์ํ๋ค | ํธ์ฐฎ์ผ์๋ค | to be sick/unwell |
๋์๋ค (to eat/drink)
์ฐจ ํ์ ๋์๊ฒ ์ด์?
Cha han-jan deu-si-gess-eo-yo?
Would you like a cup of tea? (honorific offer)
ํ ๋จธ๋๊ป์ ์ ์ฌ์ ๋์ธ์.
Hal-meo-ni-kke-seo jeom-sim-eul deu-se-yo.
Grandmother is eating lunch. (honorific)
๊ณ์๋ค (to be/stay, for people)
์ฌ์ฅ๋์ ์ง๊ธ ์ฌ๋ฌด์ค์ ๊ณ์ญ๋๋ค.
Sa-jang-nim-eun ji-geum sa-mu-sil-e gye-sim-ni-da.
The boss is in the office now. (honorific)
๋ถ๋ชจ๋๊ป์ ๋์ ๊ณ์ธ์.
Bu-mo-nim-kke-seo daek-e gye-se-yo.
My parents are at home. (honorific)
์ฃผ๋ฌด์๋ค (to sleep) ยท ๋์๊ฐ์๋ค (to pass away)
์๋ฒ์ง๊ป์๋ ์ผ์ฐ ์ฃผ๋ฌด์ญ๋๋ค.
A-beo-ji-kke-seo-neun il-jjik ju-mu-sim-ni-da.
Father sleeps early. (honorific)
ํ ์๋ฒ์ง๊ป์ ์๋
์ ๋์๊ฐ์
จ์ด์.
Hal-a-beo-ji-kke-seo jang-nyeon-e dol-a-ga-syeoss-eo-yo.
Grandfather passed away last year. (honorific)
๋ง์ํ์๋ค (to speak) ยท ํธ์ฐฎ์ผ์๋ค (to be unwell)
์ฌ์ฅ๋๊ป์ ์ ๊น ๋ง์ํ์
จ์ด์.
Sa-jang-nim-kke-seo jam-kkan mal-sseum-ha-syeoss-eo-yo.
The boss spoke briefly. (honorific)
์ด๋จธ๋๊ป์ ์์ฆ ํธ์ฐฎ์ผ์ธ์.
Eo-meo-ni-kke-seo yo-jeum pyeon-chan-eu-se-yo.
Mother has been unwell lately. (honorific)
Common mistakes
Do not add '-(eu)si-' again to a verb that is already a special honorific. Turning '๋์๋ค' into '๋์์๋ค' is incorrect.
๐ก Tip: For a possession, use '์์ผ์๋ค' (as in '์๊ฐ์ด ์์ผ์๋ค', to have time), but for a person's presence, use '๊ณ์๋ค'. Saying '๋์ด ๊ณ์๋ค' (money exists, honorific) is wrong.